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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29300853">Bring Her to Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrideofCrixus/pseuds/BrideofCrixus'>BrideofCrixus</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bane - Fandom, Batman (Movies - Nolan), The Dark Knight Rises</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Assault, F/M, Language, Murder, lots of triggers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:21:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>23,401</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29300853</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrideofCrixus/pseuds/BrideofCrixus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This story follows the storyline of TDKR and takes a sharp, near U-turn in the scene at the courthouse when Bane gestures towards “Talia” as she is awaiting “judgement,” in Crane’s pseudo-courtroom after being rounded up. I do take some pretty cavalier liberties by molding the scene to get where I want, but it’s mostly accurate up to that point. In the film, there is a woman who can be glimpsed the best at the 2:03:10 &amp; 2:03:19 mark. She is sitting closer to the base of Crane’s bench. She looks like she has blonde hair and a knit cap. Major charatcer deaths, felony assault and everything in between.</p><p>I so hope you enjoy meeting the Ivory Tower residing heiress, Lilliana Marie Carrington.</p><p>xoxo</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bane &amp; Talia al Ghul, Bane (DCU)/Original Female Character(s), Talia al Ghul/Bruce Wayne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chapter One: The Trojan War Comes to Gotham</p><p>Bane began to grow bored in Dr. Crane’s Kangaroo Court as he watched the defendants undergo due process. Each one was dragged to the center of the bustling, noisy room and surrounded by paid militants and men who’d take a life for a cigarette, hot meal or just because it was Friday.</p><p>Bane pushed off the wall and let his eyes briefly meet Miranda Tate’s from where she was awaiting judgement and sentencing. He smiled behind his mask as she gave him the arranged signal for him to pull her from the crowds for the second time, her impatience beginning to crack the austere façade of the benevolent and philanthropic Ms. Tate.  </p><p>Bane watched her rub the tips of her thumb and index finger together in small circles as he directed his gaze to the impeccably dressed man unceremoniously dropped in a mewling thump on the mahogany floor of the once revered courthouse. </p><p>Bane crossed his muscular arms over his broad chest as he stared down at the hedge fund manager who gouged people for money, milked every cent from broken souls and bought weekends with underage girls at billionaire island retreats while he kept his wife satisfied and oblivious with a bountiful daily allowance and private car and driver. </p><p>The current defendant raised his hands as he was surrounded and roughly handled by hardened men with impassive expressions as they stripped him of his Swiss watch, heavy platinum and diamond rings, titanium cufflinks and anything else of perceived or actual value, depositing them into neat and growing piles like the trains that arrived in various European locations, valuables separated with prejudice from their crying, frightened owners. </p><p>Bane watched the man’s wallet ripped free of his pant’s silk-lined pocket, crisp bills falling to the floor in concert with the clinking of metal credit cards. </p><p>Bane blinked slowly, the room seeming to stop moving and every sound suspended as his eyes fell upon a photo that had fallen from the luxury wallet. His Venom enhanced vision memorized and absorbed the image of the hedge fund manager with the veritable embodiment of Helen of Troy perched on his puny arm. </p><p>Bane felt his chest tighten as he squatted down, his knees cracking in protest and picked up the rectangular photo, the edges folded from being in the wallet for so long. His eyes drank in the woman with crystalline blue eyes that seemed to have no bottom even in the faded photograph. </p><p>Her cheekbones could cut glass and her full lips were pulled into a small smile.</p><p>Bane blinked hard and looked over at the man huddling on the ground, having a sudden urge to find solitude, a place in the dark where he could collect his thoughts. In that moment, worlds collided, and Bane became a planet drawn to the ecliptic in the form of a woman. </p><p>Bane looked up and his eyes narrowed and rapidly dilated as he saw no one except the woman standing at the base of Crane’s bench, a wool hat pulled down over her normally long, luxurious locks, tangled as she had ran from her penthouse apartment when it was raided and ransacked. </p><p>Lilliana Marie Carrington met the far away stare of the large, masked man who stood near her husband awaiting judgement.</p><p>A hormonal dam burst in Bane’s brain and flooded him with a wave of norepinephrine and dopamine which caused a chain reaction with the heady inhalation of </p><p>Venom he pulled deep into his lungs, the dancing alveoli vibrating with the stimulation as he was suddenly and shockingly looking at the woman in the photograph nestled in his large palm.</p><p>She was rendered a sudden mute as the impromptu judge Crane sentenced her husband to death for financial crimes against humanity and three seconds later his skull blossomed into a bloody red flower that spilled grey matter instead of fragrant pollen from the hollow point bullet that spiraled a hot path through his brain’s corpus colosseum.  </p><p>Lilliana felt sweat roll down the curve of her back and stain her Vera Wang dress. Beads of perspiration rolled down her bare legs to pool in the toes of her red-bottomed Louboutin’s as the masked man’s eyes moved over her.</p><p>Bane narrowed his eyes at the deep scratch marks on her neck from where her necklace had been ripped free, marring the smooth, salon-exfoliated perfection. He saw the fear still in her eyes from where she had barely escaped the people that stormed her skyscraper apartment building.</p><p>Bane kept Lilliana held in stasis with the weight of his gaze as he snapped his fingers and pointed at Talia who was still firmly in her role as Miranda Tate, rubbing her fingers together with enough friction she could’ve started a forest fire.</p><p>“Bring her to me,” Bane commanded loudly before a paid pair of minions flanked Talia and escorted her towards the exit and outside to a few idling bulky utility vehicles.</p><p>Talia tried to catch Bane’s eyes, but he avoided her chastising gaze and pointed towards where Lilliana stood rooted to the floor, thinking if she stayed still, the predator wouldn’t see her. </p><p>“That one too,” Bane growled and turned to follow Talia out of the packed courthouse, leaving Lilliana to stare at his broad back.</p><p>Lilliana was soon yanked in the same direction the masked man had left, not knowing what fate awaited her after being singled out among the many faces in the crowd.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Gated, Ultra-Exclusive, and Incredibly Expensive</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As Lilliana was marched forward to the unknown, she had to pass Robert’s still warm corpse belching arterial blood and thicker bits of tissue. She choked back a mouthful of acidic bile as she was roughly nudged forward by the anonymous man with a neutral expression and big gun.</p>
<p>Talia marched stiffly down the steps to where a well-paid mercenary held open the passenger door of the bulky vehicle. She struggled to stay in character just a little while longer as she closed her hands into fists so hard that her artificial nails cut half-moons into her palms that soon ran red with blood at her compressed fury.</p>
<p>Bane’s lips pulled into a smile of amusement as he watched Talia struggle to stay in her Miranda Tate mask as she narrowed her eyes at him as he reached the bottom of the concrete stairs after her. </p>
<p>His nervous system practically danced with glee at Talia barely being able to suppress her simmering rage which was rapidly approaching pyroclastic.</p>
<p>Bane’s Venom enhanced scent caught Lilliana’s designer perfume on the downwind that she dabbed on her wrists and behind her ears as he turned to watch her being led down the sprawling stone stairs. </p>
<p>Bane’s eyes dilated and he was certain his hazelnut orbs vibrated as his gaze traveled the tip of Lilliana’s heels, smooth bare legs, over the curvature of her knee to the bottom of her sheath dress’s hemline that stopped in the middle of her salon UV tanned thighs.</p>
<p>Behind his mask he felt his salivary glands leak metallically into his mouth as his eyes continued to travel up the flat plane of her belly and traced the curve of her full breasts through her couture dress. He paused his gaze on the soft valley of skin across her collarbones and the base of her throat before climbing up her neck and memorizing the shape of her full lips, high cheek bones and cerulean blue eyes. </p>
<p>Bane knew nothing about the woman walking towards him except that her obscenely rich, white-collar criminal husband was freshly dead in a pool of his own coagulated, cooling blood and gelatinous bits of obliterated brain tissue.</p>
<p>Bane had no idea that before Lilliana met the rich prick Robert Carrington, she was Lilliana Kozlov, heiress to the European vodka company of the same name who spent her days with other high-society ladies, each with spikier spiked heels and a bigger staff than the others to run their errands and ensure they never had to open their own doors. </p>
<p>Lilliana and her gal pals started most days with yoga at a posh studio with instructors who worked with celebrities and then a champagne brunch that half of them, Lilliana included, would excuse themselves to discreetly shove two fingers down their throat and vomit the champagne as it was still fizzy.</p>
<p>Most of the other hedge fund manager’s wives picked up that nifty weight-loss trick in college, Lilliana learned after she had come in second place at a beauty pageant right before she turned nineteen and six months before she met Robert Carrington, the mid-40’s, impeccably-dressed financier, looking for the next Mrs. Carrington among the legally-aged girls.  </p>
<p>Lilliana glanced down at the last few steps before being pulled towards the waiting utility vehicle. </p>
<p>Bane inhaled as Lilliana was pushed past him and shoved into the rear passenger seat, he pulled the delicate bouquet of Lilliana’s warm skin deep into his lungs. He nearly closed his eyes as even through the titanium coils and mesh front of his mask, she smelled different, evoked something inside him from an earlier time before words were used to communicate.</p>
<p>“Stop,” Bane barked at the soldier that was opening the passenger door to push Talia inside. </p>
<p>The heavily armed man turned towards Bane awaiting further instructions. </p>
<p>Bane met Talia’s eyes as he spoke. “Put her in the other one,” he ordered and pointed to the darker of the two parked and idling vehicles. </p>
<p>The militant proceeded without question and dragged Talia to the other waiting utility vehicle and shoved her in the second-row seat. </p>
<p>Bane watched them pull away from the curb before settling in the rear seat next to Lilliana and slamming the heavy door shut. </p>
<p>In the departing vehicle, Talia turned and looked out the back window before snarling at Barsad as he navigated them away from the courthouse. “What the fuck was that about?”  </p>
<p>Barsad looked up and met her furious gaze in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know, everything was proceeding as planned.”</p>
<p>“I know it was proceeding, I was there. Who is that woman?”</p>
<p>Barsad shook his head, “I’ve never seen her before.”</p>
<p>“Find out everything about her.” </p>
<p>As Talia continued to seethe and pepper Barsad with questions he couldn’t answer, in the still idling SUV, Bane nodded to the man who slipped behind the wheel and soon they were moving away from the curb and down the main boulevard.</p>
<p>Lilliana sat up straighter in the seat and kept as much space on the bench seat between her and the masked man as possible. She looked around the inside of the vehicle, her eyes trying to see everywhere at once.</p>
<p>Bane let her absorb her surroundings as his eyes narrowed and homed in on the light blue line of her femoral artery just under the skin of her inner thigh as her dress shifted with her frantic movements. </p>
<p>“What now?” he asked himself, never before making a decision of such unplanned magnitude. His blatant deviation from Talia’s plan was like cursing the goddess. Shouting a fist at the one who gave you life.</p>
<p>“Follow them,” Bane said to the back of the shaved head of the driver who nodded and followed without question. </p>
<p>Lilliana heard the door’s automatic locks click into place and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, looking down at her just applied manicure and managed a scowl at the chip in the French tip of her right index fingernail. </p>
<p>She smoothed her hands down her dress, pulling it as much as she could over her thighs as she raised her eyes towards the masked man that had directed his attention towards her through the swirling mass of people. </p>
<p>Lilliana cleared her throat when she found his eyes already on her. </p>
<p>“The man back there, he was your husband?” Bane asked.</p>
<p>Lilliana tilted her head slightly at the beautifully musical timbre of his voice before she nodded.</p>
<p>“Where is your residence in the city?”</p>
<p>“The Gotham Center Towers,” she murmured as she went back to frowning down at her chipped nail.</p>
<p>Bane nodded, seeing the luxury buildings in the front of his mind. </p>
<p>Gated, ultra-exclusive and incredibly expensive.</p>
<p>As Lilliana waited for the next question from the formidable man and Talia continued to simmer in the other packed vehicle, Selina stomped out of the courthouse turned slaughterhouse and slid her lithe body onto the Applied Sciences borrowed Bat Pod. Her leans thigh spread wide over the Kevlar reinforced seat, her bodysuit so tight that the small bumps in her nipple’s areola were practically visible through the shiny fabric and if one looked lower would be given the visible treat of her pussy lips compressed tight into her suit.</p>
<p>Selina revved the powerful twin turbo engine and headed in the direction the frightened and surviving witnesses pointed as Bane had torn off with at least two female hostages. One of the abducted women was the generous friend to Gotham City, Miranda Tate, the other the Kozlov Liquor heiress.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Burnt Flesh, Melted Wings and Russian Vodka</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If anyone had a drone flitting and floating around Gotham, they would’ve captured the two bulky vehicles tearing away from the courthouse with the eventual destination of Wayne Enterprises with an ending objective on the Applied Sciences department. </p>
<p>In the lead dark grey SUV, Barsad pressed the accelerator harder and the loud engine roared to life as it slurped down more high-octane fuel and continued to barrel down the boulevard where Lucius Fox was unaware of the incoming danger as he fiddled with the wiring on a newer model of the Bat Pod Selina was riding in pursuit.</p>
<p>In the closely following light grey heavy-bodied vehicle with a reinforced chassis and set of no-flat tires, Bane didn’t make Lilliana wait long until he continued his interrogation. </p>
<p>“Who are you?”</p>
<p>“Liliana,” she started and cleared her throat before adding. “Lily Carrington.”</p>
<p>Bane took a second at her spoken name, no recognition in her saying it. </p>
<p>“Who was your husband?” he asked, not considering the coldness of the question. In the space before Lilliana answered, Robert’s body was just being loaded into a van for the coroner after a thermometer had been roughly shoved into his soft belly and plunged into his dead liver for the initial report. </p>
<p>Lilliana took a breath and held it before she answered, avoiding the masked man’s unreadable gaze. </p>
<p>“He was a hedge fund manager for a firm downtown and did a lot of work in Europe.</p>
<p>“Why was he rounded up for judgement?”</p>
<p>Lilliana shuddered at his question as she remembered the events leading to being dragged to the courthouse and awaiting their fate at the feet of the sociopathic judge.</p>
<p>“Those animals ripped us out of our home,” she murmured. “They said I was complicit in Robert’s crimes,” Lilliana added and closed her eyes as she teared up thinking of her original Monet being torn off the wall, those mongrels’ grubby paws on the delicate brush strokes of each waterlily, ragged cuticles snagging her three-thousand thread count bed linen.</p>
<p>“Was your husband guilty?”</p>
<p>Lilliana shook her head, still deliberately avoiding his gaze. “I really don’t know what Robert did or didn’t do,” she finally admitted. </p>
<p>“You were comfortable spending your allowance and allowing him to operate as he pleased?”</p>
<p>Lilliana felt a surge of anger and looked up and met his hostile eyes. “I spend my own goddamn money.”</p>
<p>“Your money?”</p>
<p>Lilliana’s fiery indignation was smothered as she couldn’t help but chuckle and shrug. “Well not mine exactly, the family company.”</p>
<p>“Who is your father?”</p>
<p>“Viktor Kozlov, his father founded The Kozlov Distillery during the war.”</p>
<p>Bane nodded, recalling seeing the name plastered on bottles some of the militants would swig from with great gusto. </p>
<p>“What do you do with your time, your money and life Mrs. Carrington?”</p>
<p>Lilliana couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t really do anything,” she said as she looked down at her bare wrist, accustomed to seeing her diamond-encrusted watch. “It’s Wednesday?” she thought, “what was I doing today?” she asked herself.</p>
<p>“Hot stone massages with Wayne,” Lilliana remembered with a groan before turning to look at the masked man. “Is this about money? How much do you want?”</p>
<p>“It’s not a matter of money,” Bane answered vaguely as he couldn’t fight his eyes from returning to the bruised skin at her neck and wrists from where her sapphire necklace had been ripped from around her throat and her weighty wedding ring yanked from her finger from such force she was surprised it hadn’t broken. </p>
<p>As Bane traced the reddened patches and striated irregular lines of burst capillaries under her smooth skin, in the lead SUV, Talia continued to seethe as Barsad navigated them closer to Wayne Enterprises. </p>
<p>Talia was full of questions that no one in the vehicle could answer at Bane’s independent, deliberate deviation from what she had carefully directed.</p>
<p>In the following SUV, Bane’s question was cut off when the young driver of their SUV hit a deep pothole. Lilliana bounced on the seat and lifted a hand to clap on to her clashing knit cap pulled over her blonde tresses. </p>
<p>Bane watched the movement of her hand and narrowed his eyes when the sunlight streaming through the windows illuminated the facets of the diamond necklace she had shoved under her designer cap.</p>
<p>“What is that you have hidden away?”</p>
<p>Lilliana shook her head, initially not having a real answer. “It’s nothing,” she finally stammered as she added. “It was my mom’s, it means something.”</p>
<p>“Give those to me?”</p>
<p>Lilliana looked over at his extended half-gloved hand, his palm hidden under the well-worn leather. </p>
<p>“Take off your hat Mrs. Carrington.”</p>
<p>Lilliana shook her head, “please, if it’s money,” she implored. “My family has it,” she insisted as he wordlessly kept his hand held out towards her. </p>
<p>Lilliana’s breath became shallow and the only sounds were his deep mechanical rhythmic breaths. </p>
<p>Bane watched Lilliana blink rapidly and reluctantly pull her knit cap free, her mother’s necklace falling into her lap, several other rings and bracelets raining onto the seat and floor. </p>
<p>He kept his palm out, wordlessly demanding her to gather them and place them into his waiting palm. </p>
<p>Lilliana was surprised he didn’t eagerly snatch up the jeweled wealth. She didn’t know that Bane wanted to retrieve the fallen gemstones but was afraid to come into contact with her. He was afraid her skin would scorch him, burn him until his charred flesh fell from his bones. </p>
<p>Bane knew that touching her would be like staring into the sun too long or rubbing coarse salt into a gaping, sucking chest wound. </p>
<p>Lilliana slowly picked up every last piece of jewelry she had managed to shove under the brightly colored hat as she had tried to from the penthouse suite, being roughly gathered up by filthy hands of people that parked her car and prepared her coffee. </p>
<p>Bane watched as she leaned over to pluck an emerald tennis bracelet from the dirty, scuffed floor. His frontal lobe did backflips and his pituitary gland ejaculated copious amounts of hormones that dilated his pupils. He pulled a deep lungful of the Venom saturated analgesic into his body when the movement made her dress dip further at the neckline, exposing the very top of her latte-colored bra.</p>
<p>Lilliana dropped the jewelry into his hand, not noticing how he subtly moved his hands so that even the tip of her fingertips didn’t graze the leather covering his palm.   </p>
<p>As Lilliana dropped her jewelry into the masked man’s large palm, Selina continued to urge the Bat Pod to devour the ground she had lost checking on the victims at the courthouse.</p>
<p>She breathed a ragged sigh of relief when she recognized the path was on the way to Wayne Enterprises and minutes later pulled the Bat Pod to an idling stop a few skyscraper’s away and watched the two large, differently shaded grey SUV’s pulled to a stop.  </p>
<p>Talia jumped out of the first vehicle even before Barsad had put it into park. She marched to the second vehicle as Bane opened his heavy door and closed it before Talia could peek inside. </p>
<p>Bane beckoned towards Barsad, turning his back to Talia who tried to reach past him and pull open the door.  </p>
<p>“Take her somewhere quiet and keep an eye on her,” Bane stated and dropped his hand to Barsad’s shoulder, adding with an assertive squeeze. “She is not to receive so much as a splinter in my absence.”</p>
<p>Barsad nodded curtly, scrappy, and wiry since birth but not eager in any way to pull the apex predator’s tail.  </p>
<p>Bane turned towards Talia as Barsad walked to the other side of the vehicle and opened Lilliana’s door. </p>
<p>“Ma’am, miss,” Barsad stammered when he met Lilliana’s large, unblinking eyes before absorbing the rest of her sharp, lovely features. “Please come with me.”</p>
<p>“I have to?” Lilliana asked, shifting on the seat as she raised her hand to block the barrage of sunlight. </p>
<p>“Yes m…, you need to,” Barsad said in an apologetic tone as she slid out of the tall car, landing on the asphalt with a sharp click as her heels landed. Barsad knew Bane was watching and tried to keep his eyes off the young heiress as she smoothed her dress down and pushed her hair back before reluctantly letting the light-eyed, kind-voiced man lead her to the sprawling brightly lit lobby of Wayne Enterprises and to one of the four elevators. </p>
<p>Talia pushed past Bane and began to march after Barsad as he led Lilliana away.</p>
<p>For the first time, Bane snaked a scarred hand out with viperlike speed and closed his strong fingers around her upper arm, his fingertips well on their way to leaving oval bruises in their wake. </p>
<p>Talia glared up at her protector. “Unhand me,” she demanded lowly, her syllables carefully infused with danger. </p>
<p>Bane smiled behind his mask, “we need to focus on the task at hand. Applied Sciences has been secured.”</p>
<p>Talia frowned up at Bane, being reminded suddenly of the magnitude of strength he possessed over her. Bane was suddenly Icarus deciding to fly into the sun as he insisted that Talia accompany him to Applied Sciences.</p>
<p>“What are you doing my friend?” Talia murmured as she allowed Bane to lead her towards the gold elevators and gaudy gold-accented tile flooring. She was careful to keep her expression soft and closer to that of Miranda Tate as she wanted none of the armed loyalists see her place at the top of the food chain was at all in question.</p>
<p>Bane kept his grip on her arm unbreakable and remained silent until the shiny doors slid open. </p>
<p>Talia turned inside out the nanosecond the double doors closed and there were no witnesses and began to struggle like a hooked fish, fighting for life against a greater predator.</p>
<p>“What are you doing?” Talia shouted, dropping all of Miranda’s soft façade, fury distorting her features, spit flying from between her full lips. </p>
<p>Bane released her arm as she gesticulated wildly, she stumbled back to catch her balance against the mosaic tile inlaid elevator wall. </p>
<p>Talia pressed the elevator hold key before she whipped her angry face back towards him.</p>
<p>“Answer me,” she demanded.</p>
<p>Bane took a couple steps back from her and leaned against the opposite wall of the roomy elevator car. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said evenly and crossed his strong arms over his broad chest. </p>
<p>Talia closed the distance between them and slapped him across his masked face. Her Miranda Tate acrylic nails clicked loudly against the titanium coils. </p>
<p>“You will stop whatever it is you’re thinking of doing immediately,” she demanded and added before she pulled her hand back to slap him again. “You will put a bullet in that bitch’s head and end this little distraction.”</p>
<p>Bane caught her wrist before she made contact.</p>
<p>“What are you thinking,” Talia said as her face and voice became devoid of life as she hissed. “You are only standing here right now because of me, only living because I brought you into the light my friend.”</p>
<p>“And you think that gives you power over me?” Bane murmured with a hauntingly melodic tone and tightened his grip around Talia’s wrist until she was overcome with real pain. </p>
<p>“Let go,” Talia ordered, trying like hell to suppress the pain in her voice.</p>
<p>Bane wordlessly defied her for a few heartbeats before he finally spoke. </p>
<p>“You will forget you ever saw her,” Bane said in a more lifeless tone, adding before he released her wrist and taking the elevator off hold. “After we gain control of Applied Sciences we will continue with what you have planned.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Against the Natural Order</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The elevator doors opened, and Talia marched stiffly down the hall as the other elevators opened and spilled out copious armed men who spread throughout Wayne Enterprises and secured the building, killing anyone who resisted or fought. </p>
<p>Automatic gunfire filled the spacious halls of the Wayne Enterprises building, the echoes heard throughout several floors. Lucius Fox was one of the set of ears the sound of the marauder’s gunshots reached. </p>
<p>Fox was able to dial Bruce before the double doors of Applied Sciences were kicked open, but disappointedly only reached his voicemail.  Fox was able to get a few effective words left and the hail of bullets that served as the background really nailed the importance of the message home. </p>
<p>Several floors below, Lilliana paused as Barsad led her to a deserted office with a small sofa, bookcase, and a black mini refrigerator. </p>
<p>She paused and looked up at the ceiling and the vibrations the bullets made as they punched through walls, broke windows, and ended lives with spectacular arterial jetting.</p>
<p>“Through there,” Barsad said and let his hand hover over the small of her back, longing to just feel the fabric under his palm and the curve of her lower back. </p>
<p>Lilliana looked around the small office with the frosted glass windows and sat in the swivel chair behind the large desk. She settled back in the chair and crossed her long legs as she ran her eyes over the framed photos on the desk and plethora of sticky-backed to-do notes in rainbow-colored squares of paper. </p>
<p>Barsad opened the small fridge and held out a bottle of water towards her. “Thank you,” she murmured gratefully and accepted the water that was cold enough to hurt her teeth as she quickly drained half the bottle. </p>
<p>He grabbed a bottle for himself and settled heavily on the plush sofa as Lilliana swiveled the chair in half-circles and picked up the office owner’s calendar and looked over the upcoming presentations and board meetings, sprinkled with their children’s ballet and soccer practice.</p>
<p>Lilliana looked up through her thick fringe of lashes at Barsad as he scrolled through the messages on his phone, most from Talia who had sent a glut of texts demanding information on Lilliana. </p>
<p>Barsad remembered Bane’s tone which did not invite argument or even a thought of disobeying.</p>
<p>Lilliana let her eyes move over the red kerchief tied loosely around the soft-spoken man’s neck. Barsad forced himself to delete Talia’s message deluge and shove his phone away as he looked up to find Lilliana scrutinizing him. </p>
<p>Barsad kept his expression neutral under her pointed gaze and fished a stainless-steel flask from the inner pocket of his Kevlar tactical vest.</p>
<p>He unscrewed the top, the metallic sound blaringly loud in their mutual silence. </p>
<p>Barsad held out the flask towards her.</p>
<p>“What’s in there?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Scotch.”</p>
<p>Lilliana stood and walked over to him and accepted the flask he handed her. She took a couple burning sips before she handed it back to him. “I usually just drink vodka,” she said with a wink and returned to settle back behind the desk and started looking through the desk drawers. </p>
<p>Barsad took a sip off the flask, tasting her lipstick on the metal. He didn’t know who she was, but he found himself nervous around her, even when she wasn’t paying him any attention. He kept a chuckle to himself thinking if Bane hadn’t hand selected her from the crowd, he’d be trying to slip under her dress. </p>
<p>Upstairs, Bane followed Talia as Lucius Fox was surrounded by men with varying firearms and he was directed to sit.</p>
<p>Talia paced in front of him, Fox’s confusion clear as he didn’t understand why the benevolent and philanthropic Miranda Tate was accompanied by these terrorists. </p>
<p>“Ms. Tate?” Fox asked incredulously.</p>
<p>Talia smiled as she laughed long and lustily. “No, I’m afraid not Mr. Fox. Talia, Talia al Ghul and I am here to finish what my father started.” </p>
<p>Bane watched Talia unroll a tube of blueprints from the city planner’s office and spread them across the surface of Fox’s tidy desk.</p>
<p>Talia tapped her manicured fingertip against Gotham’s Water Treatment Plant and paused when Bane began to walk out of the room. </p>
<p>She told one of the many random men milling about to keep an eye on Fox and hurried to catch up to Bane.</p>
<p>“Where are you going?” Talia asked with irritation plain in her voice as she grabbed Bane’s muscular forearm. </p>
<p>Bane paused and looked down at her small hand gripped on to his dense, firm flesh. </p>
<p>“Return to your conversation with Mr. Fox and do not follow me,” he muttered in a musical sonata that was written only in chords the soon-to-be dead could hear.</p>
<p>Talia took an automatic step back at the sudden emptiness in Bane’s eyes as he stared down at her. She frowned and nodded stiffly. “We will discuss this later,” she huffed and marched back to misdirect her anger at Lucius Fox. </p>
<p>Bane watched Talia disappear through the wide-open double doors before he lumbered heavily to the emergency stairwell as he dialed Barsad’s burner to find out where he had stashed the liquor heiress within the massive building. </p>
<p>Bane double-backed a few times to ensure he wasn’t followed before he found the nondescript office where Barsad was babysitting. </p>
<p>Bane opened the door and found Lilliana playing a card game on the computer while Barsad sat on a sofa on the other side of the room. </p>
<p>Lilliana looked up from the screen when the masked man filled the doorway, eclipsing all light, a walking black hole devouring universes whole, exhaling stardust. </p>
<p>Barsad jumped to his feet and followed Bane out into the hallway. </p>
<p>“This is all stays between us,” Bane stated and clapped him on the back, a good-natured and unusual affectation from the fearsome man that he served with complete honor and unshakeable loyalty. </p>
<p>Barsad nodded and gestured towards the office where Lilliana awaited Bane’s return. “What’s your plan with that one?”</p>
<p>Barsad couldn’t see Bane’s smile but could hear it in his delightful musical reply. “I haven’t decided yet brother.”</p>
<p>As Bane watched Barsad walk away and push open the heavy door to the stairwell, he paused with his hand on the brushed silver doorknob. </p>
<p>Before he pushed open the door and closed it behind him, outside a few blocks away from Wayne Enterprises, Selina kept the engine of the Bat Pod idling as she dialed Bruce. She swore under her breath as she reached his voicemail. </p>
<p>Selina sent him another text message, frowning down at her phone. She slipped her phone deep into her cleavage, noting it had been the seventh time she’d reached his voicemail. She scanned the surrounding streets and buildings, trying to get a sense of how many armed militants were in Bane’s army. </p>
<p>Selina still had the wool over her eyes in regard to who Miranda Tate really was. </p>
<p>Selina still saw her as a helpless billionaire, being pulled out of a burning house but insisting her Prada purse gets medical treatment first. She knew there was no way to plan a frontal assault in broad daylight and kept the Bat Pod in a quiet low as to not draw unwanted attention with too much audible horsepower. </p>
<p>Selina navigated back to the courthouse to see if Gordon had arrived or even officer Blake. She hadn’t decided yet what she thought of Blake yet, she liked that he kept eye contact for the most part and didn’t solely speak to her tits. </p>
<p>As Selina raced back to the courthouse, anxious for her sternum to tingle when Bruce finally returned her many calls, back in the small office on the ninth floor of Wayne Enterprises, Bane closed the frosted glass door closed and found Lilliana still playing a card game that chimed every time she lined up the playing cards in sequential order.</p>
<p>Lilliana clicked the computer screen off until she could see her distorted reflection in the flat screen and looked up at the masked man. He seemed taller from where she sat in the cushioned, plush seat. </p>
<p>Lilliana crossed and recrossed her lean legs nervously as Bane looked at her. He took his eyes away long enough to lock the door and sweep his gaze around the room before coming back to meet her unblinking eyes. </p>
<p>“Do you know who I am?” Bane finally asked.</p>
<p>Lilliana shook her head, “no, I don’t watch a lot of news. Sorry,” she added with a shrug. </p>
<p>Bane kept his eyes and visible expression neutral, but his frontal lobe sucked up her words and churned out different slideshows. </p>
<p>“I can be whoever I state I am,” he thought. “She doesn’t know anything of who I am, my past, what I have vowed to bring upon this city and its people.” </p>
<p>Lilliana sat back in the swivel chair, listening to his steady mechanical breathing. She toyed with the edge of her designer dress as Bane’s eyes again found her bruised skin from the tearing hands. “She doesn’t know that she represents so much of what I loathe. Hate,” he thought bitterly as he felt the sudden weight of the jewelry he had ordered her to give to him. He had shoved it in one of the side pockets of his pants, he was eager to find a place where he would be undisturbed to examine what she held close.</p>
<p>“Do you take any prescription medications Mrs. Carrington?”</p>
<p>Lilliana narrowed her eyes, “no, why?”</p>
<p>“Are you currently suffering from a chronic illness?”</p>
<p>“Not that I’m aware of,” she remarked dryly. “Why?” she asked again. </p>
<p>“There’s going to be a need to travel soon,” Bane said vaguely.</p>
<p>“Travel where?”</p>
<p>“Across the ocean,” he said cryptically as he settled on the same sofa Barsad had recently been sitting. The drop in barometric pressure had made his blood vessels dilate too rapidly and cause his skull to ache and pound. </p>
<p>Lilliana twisted off the plastic cap of her bottled water and drained it before tossing it into a blue trash can under the desk. She looked over at the masked man as he tapped out a message on his phone, his large fingers surprisingly deft as they moved over the small keyboard. She wanted to know who he was writing and what he was saying.</p>
<p>Bane could feel the weight of her gaze and sent the message to Barsad before he looked up and met Lilliana’s eyes. </p>
<p>“Ask your questions Mrs. Carrington,” he said easily.</p>
<p>“What is going to happen to me?” Lilliana spit out.</p>
<p>Bane rose to his full height and felt a tingling in his fingertips from where he itched to touch her. He curled his hands into light fists as he let his eyes wander over the princess thrown from the ivory tower and having to learn in a hurry how to live amongst the wolves.</p>
<p>He enjoyed the multiple emotions flood over her features as he remained wordless and let a little toxic masculinity play peek-a-boo as he lowered his eyes to her chest and dragged his gaze down her body until he returned his eyes to hers. He felt an electric trill in his groin at her small intake of breath as she tried to form her words against the formidable wall of his bombastic silence. </p>
<p>“Are you going to kill me?” Lilliana breathed.</p>
<p>Bane shifted his weight, the small movement making Lilliana perceive that he was moving closer.</p>
<p>Lilliana’s wordless action in that moment provided Bane the answer to the shrill questions Talia had lobbed at him as well as Barsad’s casual inquiry.</p>
<p>Bane felt a cold spike pierce his heart from where it was nestled in its opaque pericardial sac deep within his muscular chest. “Why’d you pull her from the crowd?” his mind simultaneously asked and answered as Lilliana leapt to her feet which were clad in spiked heels made out of money and lined with a layer of trapped and trussed angel wings.</p>
<p>Bane froze as Lilliana shot out her bare fingered left hand towards him, her ring finger boasting a pale band of skin from where it had just recently been weighted down with the three-karat diamond ring.</p>
<p>She lifted her chin in defiance in the face of his mountainous form and he was at once sent back through his well of memories of being at the bottom of The Pit in Pena Dura. </p>
<p>Bane blinked steadily as he was suddenly a juvenile, learning the ways of becoming a man, of stalking the shadows and beginning to fight off the darkness, making it bleed more than himself when they parted to their respective corners. Bane was at once, back in The Pit when a shoddily assembled wood pallet was lowered from the sun-kissed soil above the darkness. </p>
<p>Bane joined the other juveniles who were molting and losing their youthfulness and gathered to watch the new residents being dropped into the place that all light came to die. </p>
<p>Bane and the other prisoners watched as the family was ripped from the pallet, the presumed father tried to shield his wife and children from the encroaching wave of psychopaths, schizotypal’s and the broken as they reached for the fresh lives, their skin still warm from the sun, their lungs still filled with air that was not corrupted. </p>
<p>Bane and a small group of men that would later rise with him from The Pit, to where he was now poised on dominating and decimating Gotham City, were helpless to intervene as the newly imprisoned father had his throat ripped open. His last gurgling breaths emerged from his torn larynx as he watched his wife dragged off into an inky pool of darkness, her life ended long after his, death was a relief to suffering she thought would never end. </p>
<p>Bane had curled his fingers into tight fists as he was forced to watch the man’s three children slowly pulled apart from where they were clinging to each other, their ragged cries reverberating and echoing off the rocks lining The Pit.</p>
<p>Bane was brought back and forth from his battered memories to the present moment and the woman standing in front of him. </p>
<p>Each blink of his eyes blurred his reality as Bane forced himself to push away the remembrance of the face he had seen in The Pit, the face that haunted his dreams.</p>
<p>“What’s your plan with that one?” Barsad’s question swirled around inside his head, asking of itself repetitively. </p>
<p>Now Bane could answer. “I’m going to save her,” Bane thought and let himself meet the eyes of the Siren who had latched onto him and burrowed inside the very cellular matrix of his bone marrow.</p>
<p>The adult Bane let the lens of youth and remembrance shroud his gaze as he met Lilliana’s eyes.</p>
<p>Lilliana became the reincarnation and physical embodiment of the young woman who had been pulled last from the wooden pallet, her bright robes torn from her lithe limbs, the smooth expanses of her bare skin soon marred with filthy hands that invaded with wielding handmade knives. Blunt force trauma from rocks broke her body, her innocence was destroyed before her life was extinguished from complete blood loss.</p>
<p>The young woman remained ethereally beautiful as she entered death, the pain making her features sharper, sweat standing out and making her face shine as her eyes sparkled with flowing tears. She had met Bane’s eyes as her body was beaten and roughly penetrated by the disease-ridden cocks of the depraved.  </p>
<p>Bane had been rapidly thrust against the natural order, the inhumane spectacle he witnessed forced him to painfully shed every last bit of unpolluted humanity as the nameless woman, her face still lovely in the throes of death, had reached out her hand towards him from the dirty limbs that entwined around her.</p>
<p>Bane was with her when she stopped living. </p>
<p>Bane shook his head, the barest of movements as he let his hands rest easily out at his sides. His strong, scarred hands uncurled from their tight fists, the lessening tension easing the whiteness of his knuckles. Lilliana kept her hand outstretched, trying to suppress the fine tremor that threatened to turn into wild shaking.</p>
<p>Lilliana flinched and raised her other hand when the masked man moved with inhuman ferocity and pulled a short-barreled gun from the small of his back. He had it leveled at the center of her body and pulled the trigger before she could so much as whisper, squeal or scream.</p>
<p>She dropped her hands to the middle of her chest and looked down at the small tranquilizer dart sticking out proudly from between her breasts, the titanium-tipped dart had slid smoothly into her smooth skin and dumped a powerful horse tranquilizer to rape into unconsciousness. </p>
<p>Lilliana stumbled sideways and caught herself on the edge of the desk as she looked back at him. </p>
<p>Even behind the mask, her palpable fear that filled the air was familiar foreplay for Bane and teased the small hairs in his nose as he filled himself up with the fear-stained air surrounding her.</p>
<p>She saw him suddenly in double vision. “Am I going to wake up?” she asked on a slur. </p>
<p>“Yes,” Bane answered immediately and approached her slowly even though she was nearly asleep from where she barely stood.</p>
<p>His hands were frozen at his sides as she dropped to one bare knee, her hands scrabbling for purchase on the desk. Bane found himself unable to reach for her as she sagged and slowly collapsed into a beautifully unconscious heap. </p>
<p>Bane squatted down next to her, hovering his hands over her nose and mouth, relieved to feel the steady warm exhalation against the bare tips of his fingers. In that moment of staring down at her, Bane saw her as a goddess that had tumbled down from the peak of Mt. Olympus. He vowed to keep her happy and surround her with orchards of pomegranates for the rest of her life. </p>
<p>He looked over his shoulder as a few sharp knocks landed on the frosted glass door. </p>
<p>Bane stared down at Lilliana’s crumpled form before rising, his knees clicking in protest, to open the door to Barsad as he was raising his hand to knock again. </p>
<p>Bane stood aside to let Barsad inside before closing and locking the door behind him. </p>
<p>“Gather up Ms. Kozlov and take her here,” Bane said in an unreadable musical tone as he held up a heavily creased and folded map, the legend once vibrantly colored, now faded to a dull beige. </p>
<p>Barsad didn’t need to voice his shock at the destination on the map. His eyes landed on Lilliana’s unconscious body before whipping his eyes back to the map and rapidly up to meet Bane’s eyes, his mouth falling open to protest.</p>
<p>Before Barsad could give voice to his instantaneous concern, Bane replaced the map back inside the inner pocket of his heavy shearling jacket and spoke first.</p>
<p>“To keep her free from harm, she needs to be far from here.”</p>
<p>Barsad nodded as Bane continued. </p>
<p>“Leave here with her, I will join you there.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Destination: 26°17′53″N 73°01′08″E</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bane forced himself to square his broad shoulders and heavily stomp away from Barsad and Lilliana’s unconscious form. </p>
<p>Barsad closed and locked the door before he stared down at the young liquor heiress. He paced the room as he tried to figure out the best way to gather up her flaccid limbs and get her out of the building. </p>
<p>Lilliana’s central nervous system was stomped into catatonia with the over-exuberant infiltration of the tranquillizer as Barsad continued to pace the room. As his eyebrows pulled into a frown, outside the locked room, Bane ascended back to Applied Sciences where Talia continued to pepper Fox with rapid-fire questions about the fusion reactor.</p>
<p>Talia looked over her shoulder as Bane filled the doorway and closed the distance to where Fox was pulling up various charts and mathematical sequences in regard to the reactor’s stability.  </p>
<p>Talia didn’t pause in her deluge of questions but let her eyes fill with darkness as she met Bane’s eyes. She nearly stumbled over her questions when she didn’t see the evidence of penitence, humility or remorse looking back from the roiling depths of his jade green and fiery chestnut brown irises. </p>
<p>Bane let his large hands splay out lightly to his sides as he began to move around the large room, observing that the paid militants, criminals wanted in multiple countries, ex-military and bounty hunters were all functioning in the manner in which they were directed. He was pleased to see the paid muscle and tactical minds working efficiently to pack up the guns, ammunition, and explosives. </p>
<p>As Talia continued her inquisition and Bane carried on with his silent, dangerous observation, back at the Gotham courthouse, Selina dialed Bruce again and nearly threw her phone to the scuffed tile floor when she reached his voicemail. </p>
<p>Outside the courthouse, Jim Gordon marched up the concrete steps at a brisk pace, flanked by Blake and a few other GPD officers.</p>
<p>Jim paused as he surveyed the carnage the inside of the austere courthouse had become, the defiled chambers of justice, now stained with mockery after being gang-raped by criminality.  </p>
<p>As Gordon, Blake and the other GPD officers fanned out, back behind the locked, frosted door of the nondescript office at Wayne Enterprises. Barsad smoothed a fabric wall hanging he had ripped off the wall over a crinkly, plastic tarp. </p>
<p>Barsad tried to lift Lilliana with as much finesse as he could but for a man that could disarm a bomb that was in a single digit countdown and trap and truss for fun, he was suddenly clumsy and awkward as he arranged Lilliana in the Miro reproduction wall hanging and wrapped her up like a tasty, delectable appetizer.</p>
<p>He unlocked the door and checked that the hallway was clear before carrying Lilliana over the threshold, an unconscious pale bride in his arms. Barsad carried Lilliana to a service elevator that went to the roof of Wayne Enterprises.</p>
<p>Barsad found the helicopter that Bane had directed him to board with a rough-looking retired Desert Storm Apache pilot at the controls. The man with the thousand-yard stare and soul-shattering war cry started the turbine shaft engine and got the large rotors moving as Barsad loaded Lilliana into one of the jump seats and secured the five-point harness around her limp, couture-clad body before slipping into the co-pilot seat and slipping on a sturdy headset.</p>
<p>The horizontally spinning rotors lifted the helicopter from the roof of Wayne Enterprises and towards a private airfield owned by John Daggett, where a Challenger 650 Learjet was gassed up and ready to take off for an overseas flight. </p>
<p>A destination almost eight-thousand miles away as the crow flies.  </p>
<p>As the battle-hardened Purple Heart awarded soldier navigated the sleek helicopter to the airfield, on the Applied Sciences floor, Talia ordered Fox to be taken away to be secured with the rest of the remaining people in the building. The floors had been swept and every person that had been trying to hide under a desk, in a closet or umbrella stand had all been corralled and confined to the spacious dining area at Wayne Enterprises. The Michelin star chef would disembowel anyone who dared to say he cooked cafeteria food. </p>
<p>The kitchen boasted Viking ranges and granite countertops with cloth napkins and china plates. </p>
<p>The frightened Wayne Enterprise employees all huddled in scared circles as the armed men lined up in an uneven row in front of them. The tallest gunman shouted which heralded them all to raise their automatic and semi-automatic firearms and end the life of every remaining Wayne Enterprise employee. </p>
<p>Death descended on mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. Best friends would soon be writing eulogies and many tuna noodle casseroles and lasagnas would be made for wakes, receptions and memorials at rented banquet halls, backyards, and church rectories. </p>
<p>As arteries jetted, bones shattered and hearts stopped in the dining hall, back in Applied Sciences, Talia stalked to where Bane was looking out onto the city through a floor to ceiling tinted window.</p>
<p>“Where’s the bitch from the courthouse?” </p>
<p>Bane didn’t give a flicker that he had even heard Talia’s shrill tone. </p>
<p>“Where is she?” she repeated and moved until she was in his line of slight and slapped her hand loudly against the window, her palm kissing the glass warmed by the sun. </p>
<p>Bane looked up at the sun shining overhead, squinting under its intensity before speaking. </p>
<p>“She is gone.”</p>
<p>“Gone?” Talia parroted.</p>
<p>Bane only nodded in response and returned his attention to the world outside the skyscraper as his wordlessness only made Talia’s fury surge. She was forced to maintain her composure with the milling about of the armed militants.</p>
<p>“Gone where?” she pressed as he continued to remain silent. </p>
<p>Before Bane answered, he felt a flutter as his mitral valve rapidly dilated deep in the musculature of his pounding heart as he thought of the goddess of liquor who had tumbled from the clouds and landed in front of him. </p>
<p>“She’s gone from this place,” Bane answered with a mechanical exhalation. </p>
<p>“What are you doing?” Talia asked as she put her hands on her hips. “My father would be disappointed, your behavior is unbecoming for The League of Shadows,” she hissed.</p>
<p>“Your condemnation means nothing to me,” Bane said with musical emptiness.</p>
<p>“I am warning you my friend,” Talia seethed icily. “Your actions will be punishable if they keep interfering with fulfilling my father’s legacy.”</p>
<p>Bane was at once contemporaneous with traversing the River Styx at the same time the Ferry Man was accepting coins as he turned from the window to meet Talia’s piercing stare. </p>
<p>“Your voice will be the death of you,” Bane murmured and pushed past her, nearly knocking her to the ground as she was reduced to a blade of grass being crushed under the metal tracks of a six-ton tank. </p>
<p>Talia smoothed her hair back and huffed as she watched Bane depart, conscious of the many pairs of eyes that were observing the interaction.</p>
<p>As Talia pressed her lips together and clenched her teeth so hard that her jaw popped, Bane stalked down the hall and ducked into the privacy of the fire escape stairs and scrolled through several messages Barsad had sent. </p>
<p>His expression stayed neutral as he read from the tiny, square screen that Barsad had smuggled Lilliana from the building and that they were safely en route to Daggett’s Learjet. </p>
<p>Bane noted the time from the screen, calculating what time it would be when the roughly thirteen-hour flight landed in a country that was ten hours ahead within their time zone. </p>
<p>Bane stepped back into the plushy carpeted halls and stalked through the floors until he could round up a few trusted militants that he had taken lives with before on several continents over the past years. </p>
<p>As the battle-scarred pilot landed the helicopter at Daggett’s airstrip and Barsad loaded Lilliana on the Learjet, back at Wayne Enterprises, Bane gave the trio of trusted men specific orders in regard to a seek and destroy mission.</p>
<p>The three men, their faces etched with unspoken pain and suffering, all nodded and splintered off to their respective objectives. </p>
<p>As Barsad carried Lilliana up the carpeted steps of the jet and settled her in a plush, ivory-colored leather seat and secured the belt across her lap, his phone rang from his pocket as Talia was on the other end, pacing a small room she had shut herself inside. </p>
<p>Barsad blew out a sharp breath before he answered.</p>
<p>“Yes?”</p>
<p>“Where is that woman?” Talia shrieked when Barsad picked up.</p>
<p>Barsad held the phone away from his ear. “I don’t know,” he said lamely, thinking it sounded like a weak excuse even with the shitty connection.</p>
<p>“Goddammit, where did you take her?”</p>
<p>“To an office on one of the lower floors,” Barsad said as he shrugged out of his coat and laid it over the front of Lilliana’s body. His fingertips ached to touch the goosebumps that sprouted up on the bare skin he could see.  He clenched his hand into a fist as Talia’s tone grew angrier.</p>
<p>“What office? I’m walking to the elevator now,” Talia growled as she practically jogged down the hallway and pressed the round button to call the elevator.</p>
<p>Barsad held the phone away from his ear, hearing Talia’s voice squeaking through the speaker, sounding like a schizophrenic rat on PCP.</p>
<p>Barsad tapped a square key and ended the call, he knew the consequences could be severe as he slid his phone back into his pocket and went to talk to the small flight crew for the private jet.</p>
<p>The seasoned pilot that had been flying Daggett around the world for decades, confirmed the coordinates with Barsad before finishing his pre-flight checklist. </p>
<p>Within half an hour, the obscenely expensive jet was taxiing towards the runway, bound for a land that bled culture, history, and the veritable embodiment of Bane’s life in a country with six climate types. </p>
<p>One could travel from north to south or east to west and encounter deserts to tundra and everything in between.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. For Sale: Two Shrouds of Anonymity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lilliana stayed comatose in the plush seat of the Learjet as it rose into the sky as Barsad watched the city become smaller until he was looking at wispy cirrus clouds. </p><p>More than four thousand miles away from Gotham City, Viktor Kozlov, Lilliana’s father was sipping a rich espresso at Café Central in Vienna, regarded by many as the epitome of experiencing Viennese coffee and absorbing the spirit of the philosophers, composers and enigmatic people in history who had passed through and sip from the same cup their lips had touched.</p><p>Viktor dabbed at his mouth with a heavy napkin when his phone rang from inside his double-breasted suit. </p><p>“Da?” </p><p>Viktor’s face blanched as he managed to decipher the shrieks from the hysterical woman on the other end of the call.</p><p>Across the linen-covered square table, Viktor’s chief of security was on his feet, one hand slipping inside his leather trench to rest on the heavy handle of his Stechkin APS semi-auto pistol. The gun was uncomfortable against his side with the attached silencer. </p><p>Viktor crumbled up his napkin and threw it to the table and gestured for Yuri to get the car. </p><p>Viktor didn’t blink or breathe as he listened to the strongly accented Marta, Lilliana and Robert’s private chef detail the events that had unfolded in Gotham City. </p><p>Marta said that she and Lilliana had been having potent Manhattan’s and discussing the menu for the evening when the penthouse door was kicked open and armed thugs and the unwashed masses began to swarm into the spacious Carrington home, defiling her imported French linen sofa with their filthy fucking paws. </p><p>Marta had been spared since she was regarded as a slave to the rich, an underpaid woman who cooked for the ultra-rich and pampered, did their dishes and all but chewed up their food and spit it in their mouths. </p><p>Yuri escorted Viktor to the luxury sedan and within minutes was on the phone with a close contact within the Russian mafia. </p><p>Viktor clenched his hands into fists as he arranged for men with specific talents to find his beloved daughter. Their interrogation methods violated every syllable of the Geneva Convention and the Rights of Man. </p><p>As Yuri and Viktor were rushed back to the Kozlov summer estate in the rolling green countryside of Austria, back in Gotham City, Talia finally shoved her phone in her pocket after the twelfth call to Barsad went immediately to voicemail. </p><p>She looked around the hallway before she squeezed the bridge of her nose, pressure growing in her skull. “What is happening?!?” Talia asked herself. “There would never be such blatant disrespect for my father,” she thought bitterly and stalked to the fire escape stairs and began taking them upwards two at a time. </p><p>Talia was sweating and panting by the time she sprinted to the rooftop and spilled out into the gravel-topped sunlit top of the towering Wayne Enterprises. </p><p>She nodded to some of the random armed militants milling around and stopped short at the empty space where the recently departed helicopter had been.</p><p>Talia waved over a fresh-faced kid with a gun that had more balls than him. “Where’s the bird that was here?” she asked pointing to the vacant space. </p><p>The kid was a poor liar, no confidence even with the Browning M1919 semi-auto machine gun in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug, refusing to meet even the eyes of her shadow. </p><p>Talia pressed her lips together and stepped very close to the young man, so close that she could see the drops of sweat be birthed on his pale face and heard his breathing slow. She knew he’d recently had something with peppers on the faint exhale that exuded between his dry lips. </p><p>“You are not important; I will have you thrown from this building if you do not provide me a satisfactory answer.”</p><p>The young man swallowed hard, gastric juice raced a hot path up his throat and he fought to shift from one steel-toe clad foot to the other. “He left, they left, they’re gone,” he finally stammered.</p><p>“Who?” Talia pressed and leaned so close that their bodies nearly touched. </p><p>“The guy that’s always around you, the red thing tied around his neck,” he babbled, his bladder threatening to release.</p><p>“Barsad? He was flying the bird?”</p><p>The boy shook his head so hard that a drop of sweat flew from his cheek and kissed Talia’s chin. “No there was someone else flying, he had a woman with him.”</p><p>“A woman?”</p><p>The boy nodded furiously, looking like he was beginning to have a seizure. “Yes, she was dead or unconscious or something, she was all wrapped up.”</p><p>“And it was just the three of them?” Talia pressed.</p><p>“The boy nodded, feeling some relief when the fire in Talia’s eyes became somewhat diminished as his words flowed forth. </p><p>Talia nodded after the silence grew so long that the young man was certain he had already died and was only existing on his finite tidal breath. He blinked and felt his anal sphincter unclenched when Talia nodded again and abruptly marched away, taking the elevator back to Applied Sciences instead of another impromptu cardio session on the metal stairs.  </p><p>As Talia matched back to the encrypted files about the reactor, back at the courthouse, Selina Kyle stalked around the carnage in her impossibly high-heeled leather boots that licked up the length of her long, lithe legs.</p><p>She frowned as she joined Gordon and Blake in the courthouse’s security office to review the surveillance footage of Dr. Crane’s last Kangaroo Court session and try to discern the identity of the second woman abducted from the grainy footage. </p><p>As Selina leaned close to the screen, on the other side of the world where Barsad was headed with the precious cargo embodied in an unconscious heiress, an arms dealer and human trafficker stretched his arms wide as he walked out onto the balcony of his well-fortified and secured villa.</p><p>The Eastern Indian billionaire Sinclair Jopha watched a delayed news feed of the upheaval happening in Gotham City. </p><p>One of Sinclair’s staff brought him a silver carafe of sweetly traditional Madras kaapi with a small china cup that was ridiculously small in his large hand. </p><p>Sinclair was sipping the sugary, smooth coffee when he was brought an encrypted satellite phone.    </p><p>“It’s the masked man,” the quiet female staffer whispered before she passed him the live call. </p><p>Sinclair nodded and dismissed any of the ears that could possibly overhear before he spoke into the receiver. </p><p>“I see you’ve been busy,” Sinclair said with a chuckle.</p><p>On the east coast of the United States, Bane was using a similar style satellite phone from the parking garage of Wayne Enterprises. </p><p>“Jopha,” Bane started, a light warmth imbuing the melody of his voice talking to a fellow soldier-in-blood. “I need to make a couple big purchases.”</p><p>“What do you need bhai? (brother)”</p><p>“To disappear completely, leave no traces.”</p><p>Sinclair whistled lowly, “that might cost a lot bhai.”</p><p>In the basement parking garage, Bane nodded, understanding what he was asking for as he added more to an already almost impossible request.</p><p>“I need the same for someone else as well as money and a place to start over.”</p><p>Sinclair laughed until his belly ached. “Oh bhai, who is this other person?”</p><p>Bane was silent so long that Sinclair immediately sobered. “It’s going to cost a lot to put that together,” he said gravely.</p><p>“Will a weaponized fusion reactor cover the cost?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. A Fractured Kraken Bleeding Lava</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the bowels of the Wayne Enterprises building, Bane ended the call with the Middle Eastern billionaire who could look at a person and determine their value in the robust skin trade market. Sinclair had diversified decades earlier and even if he couldn’t make a profit selling someone as a living, breathing, and bleeding sex doll, he could truss them up fine and sell each organ, lymph node and even the slippery, slick synovial fluid under the knee’s patella plate for a tasty profit. </p>
<p>Bane slipped his phone away and did a onceover of a large utility vehicle. He popped the hood and did a cursory examination of the engine before checking the oil and other fluid levels. </p>
<p>He returned with a purposeful stride to the freight elevator, as he ascended the floors with a gentle ding, his three dangerous, heavily armed worker bees buzzed around the building, working secretly to arrange the dominoes for him to kick over. </p>
<p>As Bane returned to Applied Sciences, back at the Gotham courthouse, Blake, Gordon, and Selina waited as the facial recognition software worked at guessing Lilliana’s name. The three of them returned to where bodies were still being tagged, photographed, and having their flaccid limbs arranged into navy blue body bags. </p>
<p>The bags were loaded like limp bricks into the backs of the Gotham coroner vans and transported to the morgue for identification, autopsies if deemed necessary and the awful task of contacting the next of kin and enduring being a voyeur for official identification and the very moment someone sees and feels the weight of their loss. </p>
<p>Selina flinched when her phone began to vibrate from where it was nestled deep between her round, full breasts, the body suit pressing closer than a lover. “Fucking finally,” she hissed and practically sprinted from the gallery to find an empty office and locked herself inside. </p>
<p>“Bruce!?” Selina practically shouted.</p>
<p>“I’m just seeing the news, what’s not being reported?”</p>
<p>“Where are you?” she asked, anger transparent in her tone. </p>
<p>Selina felt a peculiar sensation prick her belly and begin a seed of doubt when Bruce paused and very clearly began speaking with a lie.</p>
<p>“I had to jet to Tokyo, The Wayne Foundation is joining the Olympic committee.”</p>
<p>Selina up righted the knocked over office chair and sank into it before she tucked away any questions until later with the pressing nature of the moment. “Bane kidnapped Miranda Tate and some other woman we’re working on identifying. He left a lot of bodies on the ground.”</p>
<p>“I can’t get out of here for at least another couple days.”</p>
<p>Selina blinked rapidly. “Bruce, Bane and his men have completely taken over your fucking building. There have been multiple reports of gunfire and a helicopter left the building.”</p>
<p>Selina heard Bruce give a ragged sigh before speaking. “It’s important I get things situated here, if I don’t the building Bane took over is worthless anyway.”</p>
<p>“Things are really that bad?” </p>
<p>Bruce chuckled, “yes they are. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”</p>
<p>Selina stared down at the phone after he ended the call. The small seed of doubt had sprouted quickly, a small green leaf grew amidst her stomach’s gastric juice as she went and found Gordon and told him that Bruce wouldn’t be there for a few days. Gordon was disappointed, also thinking something was amiss, something he couldn’t quite identify. </p>
<p>As Blake, Gordon and Selina gathered back in the security office and discussed what limited information each of them had, back at Wayne Enterprises, Talia paced around Applied Sciences, flipping through novel length technology specs, and running the square-tip of her blood red acrylic nails on the surface of the platinum and titanium arms, legs, and bolts of the varying equipment. </p>
<p>She was shaken from her fugue when Bane strode into the room, his form filling the doorway like a modern-day Sampson with a shorn scalp and righteous anger. <br/>Talia glanced over at him. “Where have you been?” she finally asked when he remained silent. </p>
<p>Bane regarded her as a quiet statue, carved from stone before he spoke. “Preparing,” he said.</p>
<p>“Preparing? Preparing for what?”</p>
<p>“Fulfillment,” Bane murmured musically as he looked around the room, counting the amount of anonymous men milling about.</p>
<p>Talia fought to keep herself from looking flustered and turned her attention to the computer monitor that Fox had made only accessible by her handprint. She traced the edges of the keyboard as she spoke. </p>
<p>“Where’s that woman? I was told that Barsad left with her.”</p>
<p>Bane nodded. “She is gone from here.”</p>
<p>“She’s gone at your order?”</p>
<p>Bane nodded.</p>
<p>Talia clenched her teeth so hard that her jaw popped. “Do you think I will let that stand? Who is she and where did you have Barsad take her?”</p>
<p>“She is not your concern nor anything you need to further think upon.”</p>
<p>Talia closed her hands into fists before she turned to the random men that were collecting crates of ammunition and various military-grade RPG’s. </p>
<p>“I need the room cleared,” Talia bellowed and nodded her thanks as the men departed and closed the door after them.</p>
<p>Talia whipped her face towards Bane the moment they were alone, pure, unadulterated hatred spewing from her mouth and filling her eyes. “What do you think you are doing? You will tell me where you are planning to hide that whore and your exact plans.”</p>
<p>Behind his mask Bane smiled broadly. </p>
<p>Talia couldn’t see his lips but could see his eyes fill with brilliant amusement. His gleeful, suppressed laughter shone brighter and burned hotter than her fury.</p>
<p>“She is of no concern to you and I shall do as I please with her.”</p>
<p>Talia laughed loudly, anger giving way to hysterical laughter that soon had her belly aching. She stood up straight as her peals of laughter dissipated into a dry chuckle as she smoothed her shirt down. </p>
<p>Talia leveled her gaze at him, “I am Talia al Ghul, daughter of Ras al Ghul. He will rise again as Lazarus in the new Utopia I create. Only those of my choosing will remain living as we await my father’s return,” she said in an empty tone. </p>
<p>Bane looked past Talia’s shoulder at the reactor, thinking the nanocrystalline tungsten plasma material was a new life, existence, and identity. As Bane let his mind paint thoughts he always thought would only exist hidden and in the dark, Lilliana remained firmly gripped in the tranquilizer as the Learjet settled at a cruising altitude. </p>
<p>Barsad sat diagonal from Lilliana in another plush, ivory seat, openly staring at her sleeping face and peeks of bare skin from around the blanket he had settled over her. </p>
<p>“You have to stop looking at her,” he murmured to himself and fished his flask free of his pocket, growling when he found it empty. All of Barsad’s orders to himself to stop looking at Lilliana failed as he caught the whiff of her lipstick remaining on the stainless-steel lip of the flask. </p>
<p>He felt an electrical surge through his groin, and he looked around before standing up and closing the small distance to Lilliana’s comatose body.</p>
<p>Barsad felt toxic guilt slip around him but his cock spoke louder as he tugged the blanket away from her body, feeling a jolt when he found her shoulder strap had slipped and revealed the top of her right breast. </p>
<p>He fumbled his eager cock free and started frantically stroking himself to painful hardness as he tugged the dress down enough to expose part of her mocha-colored bra. Barsad gasped as he came in record time, feeling like a clumsy teenager as he came all over his hand and pants, swearing softly as his thighs shook and his forehead cropped up with a sheen of sweat even in the temperature-controlled cabin climate.</p>
<p>Barsad tucked his cock away and arranged her dress back into place before he made his way to the roomy bathroom to scrub the sticky come off his pants. He washed his face and breathed raggedly as he dried off with the high thread count hand towel. He was ashamed as he met his own reflection. “You’re going to sign your own death warrant if you don’t stop now,” he told himself.</p>
<p>As Lilliana continued to sleep, Barsad drank himself into a drunk nap as the air miles passed. </p>
<p>As Lilliana slept, in Vienna, her father Viktor paced the floor of his office that was dominated by a replica of The Resolute desk. He kept looking at his phone, waiting for Yuri to give him an update after his face-to-face with one of the Russian Mafia’s Brigadier’s. </p>
<p>Viktor looked up at the mother-of-pearl wall clock, Yuri had left with a duffle bag of good faith money three hours before.  </p>
<p>Viktor settled behind the massive desk and stared at a framed picture of Lilliana and her sister. “Bring back my kotenok (kitten),” he said before his voice broke and his shoulders shook as he sobbed in the lavish office, now filled with first editions and unbridled pain. </p>
<p>As Viktor continued to watch the clock, back in Gotham City on the Applied Sciences floor. Bane straightened his back as much as his pain tolerance would allow as he met the jagged daggers shooting from Talia’s eyes.</p>
<p>“You are your father’s daughter,” Bane began and took random, intermittent steps towards Talia as he continued speaking. “You do not possess his strength or honor, all he bestowed to you was a name.”</p>
<p>Talia fought to stand still even though every blood cell screamed to retreat. “How dare you speak to me in that manner,” she shrieked and swung her arm intending to have her palm meet the side of his face. </p>
<p>Bane’s hand shot out in viperlike reflexes and snatched her wrist from the air. A moan of pain escaped from between her lips when he squeezed hard enough that she could feel the bone’s fracturing imminent. </p>
<p>“Don’t mistake your name for value,” he growled in the mechanical emptiness of the dead. “All I need from you is this hand,” Bane reminded her and raised her hand in the air with bountiful enthusiasm. He lifted her completely off her feet and tore a scream from her mouth as he hoisted her up in the air like a torch, a god shaking <br/>her from the veritable heavens, she was a fish flopping on a nylon line. </p>
<p>“Do not tempt me to rip your arm free and leave you to bleed to death,” Bane musically rasped and suddenly released her.</p>
<p>Talia fell to the floor, not anticipating him dropping her to the unforgiving tile. </p>
<p>She stared up at him as he blocked out the fluorescent light. “My friend, my protector,” she whispered and reached for him. </p>
<p>Bane narrowed his eyes at her hand as she reached up for him. “Compose yourself, then we will talk,” he muttered and turned away from her. A pounding on the closed double doors drew his attention and he opened it to find two of his diligent ants standing there with status updates. The third drone was busily working on the satellite panel and would be done within a couple hours. </p>
<p>Talia watched as bane conferred quietly with the two men, she couldn’t hear anything they were saying. She growled in frustration as she struggled to her feet and rubbed her sore wrist which twitched in pain in time with each beat of her heart. </p>
<p>She kept her eyes on Bane’s broad back and was seated staring at him when he closed the doors and turned to face her. </p>
<p>“What were you talking about with them?”</p>
<p>“Nothing you need concern yourself with.”</p>
<p>“What has happened, when did you suddenly decide that you could operate individually and against me?” </p>
<p>Bane paused as he considered her question. All he thought of were reasons he wouldn’t dare say aloud.</p>
<p>“Because I want her,”  he thought.</p>
<p>“She will save me,” Bane told himself.</p>
<p>“She will heal me,” he thought as he tried to break free of answering her questions in the front of his mind.</p>
<p>“What has happened to you?” Talia asked softly, shaking her head as she added in a pitiful tone. “You were a warrior, a soldier, a man of honor and now you’re a what?”</p>
<p>Bane felt ugly anger fill him as Talia questioned his core, his identity. His body ached from where he had been broken and shoddily reassembled for her. She would use him as a board on a river of lava to stay alive without a second thought. </p>
<p>“Make the reactor mobile,” Bane demanded musically. </p>
<p>Talia shook her head as Bane’s tone grew in its intensity with its melodic concerto as he repeated himself. “This is where you concede the crown,” he growled. </p>
<p>“Fuck you,” she shouted and moved with honed agility and yanked a small caliber .38 from the back of her pants and fired three rounds in rapid succession from the pistol. </p>
<p>Bane grunted and clapped a hand to his right shoulder as a bullet slid under his clavicle and lodged in the thick muscle tissue, lodging itself wetly, penetrating him. </p>
<p>One of the two shots went wild and the other buried itself into the Kevlar vest over his heart. </p>
<p>He drew an eight-inch Kunai throwing knife from a side holster and threw it at her with astonishing accuracy. The diamond shaped blade slid into the front of her throat, acting like an ear, nose and throat surgeon removing a cancerous thyroid. The point of the blade was stopped by her spine, the tip bursting into her vertebral column, leaking cerebrospinal fluid down her throat. </p>
<p>Bane watched impassively as Talia clawed at her throat and gasped as her inhales tried to pass the blade blocking their way. He watched her succumb to cardiac death and crumble to the floor.</p>
<p>Bane stared down at Talia’s clinically dead body, the severed arteries still leaking before he dialed the burner of one of his sociopathic worker bee’s phones.</p>
<p>Shortly after he ended the call, the doors opened and the same two men from earlier wheeled in a lead-lined crate and brought it close to the reactor, swinging wide to avoid Talia’s body. </p>
<p>Bane bent over with a groan and lifted Talia by her dead wrist and smashed her hand against the screen that moved over her palm and fingerprints and beeped in recognition confirmation. </p>
<p>He nodded in satisfaction and dropped her unceremoniously back to the ground and together with the other two men, moved the reactor to the crate and sealed it up.</p>
<p>Bane followed the men as they pushed the reactor on the wheeled cart to the service elevator and down to the parking garage. </p>
<p>The three of them loaded the crate into the steel-grey utility vehicle with no-flat tires and reinforced steel door panels. They idled the engine and discussed the best route to Daggett’s airfield until the third man could join them. </p>
<p>Bane gave the go ahead to a fleet of similar vehicles to all exit Wayne Enterprises single file and go in different directions. They were unsure of the weight of surveillance. </p>
<p>As Bane and the deadly trio drove to the airfield, back at the courthouse, the facial recognition popped up with a match for Lilliana and soon Blake, Selina and Gordon were reading about the former beauty queen Lilliana Carrington. </p>
<p>“Holy shit,” Blake said when he saw her maiden name. “That’s the vodka company, this has to be about a ransom.”</p>
<p>Gordon nodded, “this young woman and Miranda Tate have billions between them.”</p>
<p>Selina tried to find big holes in the theory, money and terrorism went well together. “What’s the move here?”</p>
<p>As Gordon, Blake and Selina brainstormed tactics, Bane and pals eventually arrived at the airfield to the Soviet Era Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo plane. </p>
<p>The men moved with urgent efficiency to the large plane and were soon taxiing the runway, the big beast soon lifting off the air for a trans-Atlantic flight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. A Palace Overlooking Hell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>About an hour before the Learjet carrying Barsad, Lilliana and the small flight crew landed in Jodphur, Rajasthan India and were met by sleek sedans with heavily armed drivers, still in the sky, Lilliana groaned and slowly stirred awake. </p>
<p>She squinted and blinked her eyes as she looked around the plush cabin of the custom jet.</p>
<p>“This looks like daddy’s plane,” Lilliana slurred and rubbed at the grit in the corners of her eyes before she focused on Barsad staring back at her. He was back to sitting diagonally from her, fully dressed, both of his hands in plain sight. </p>
<p>“Where the fuck are you taking me now?” Lilliana asked, anger at being drugged, man-handled and shipped around like cargo had her pristine tail feathers ruffled. </p>
<p>As Barsad struggled to answer the question, in the bustling city of Tokyo, Bruce turned his phone off, he closed his eyes at turning away from Gotham for the moment.</p>
<p>Bruce was telling the truth about being in Tokyo, but the only fact that tied him to the Olympics was that he had been fucking and then impregnated a former gold-medalist winning figure skater. Her father was an important man who expected Bruce to measure up to a certain standard. Bruce knew that even as Batman, he would very well die trying to outrun the Yakuza.  </p>
<p>Bruce had only returned Selina’s call after he watched the birth of his daughter, Martha Nakano. He had cried for the first time in decades when he was able to pass on his mother’s name and his soon-to-be wife’s father was proud to have the warrior surname attached to his first grandchild birthed by his favorite child. </p>
<p>As Bruce returned to his young fiancée’s side and kissed the tip of his newborn daughter’s nose, still in US airspace, the cargo jet’s powerful engines carried Bane and pals to the same coordinates that Lilliana and Barsad were barreling towards. He closed his eyes and slumped heavily into the jump seat. Bane could see Talia’s near exsanguinated body still lying at his feet, warm, the flesh still supple, the skin clear and not yet stained with ugly lividity. </p>
<p>Bane remembered the time in The Pit that he protected Talia, wincing even in the present moment as he recalled every bone-breaking blow to his body. How his midsection was pummeled with fists, feet, and blunt objects. </p>
<p>All he tasted was blood and spit out bile and other thicker bits as his internal organs were beaten into submission.</p>
<p>There was no anesthesia in The Pit and Bane had endured every crude stitch the former surgeon had placed, the jolt of his bones being set and straightened to resemble as close to normal a frame as possible. </p>
<p>Bane had lived in constant pain and suffering until Talia returned and hoisted him from The Pit and to the warm sand of the surface. </p>
<p>Bane opened his eyes as the jet hit a pocket of turbulence, remembering the triumph that flashed in her eyes when he could focus on Talia’s face after she “rescued” him. She had seen him in that moment as an animal, he was meant to heel at her feet, whether she was wearing the boots of a warrior or the spiked heels of a philanthropic benefactor. </p>
<p>He stared down at his hands that were settled lightly on the tops of his muscular thighs, the scarred fingers loosely splayed.</p>
<p>Talia’s hateful face and cruel aura was replaced by that of the young liquor heiress. Bane felt everything he thought he knew about himself begin to unravel, down to his veritable DNA sequencing. Every part of him split in a near-literal and metaphorical shift. </p>
<p>Bane grunted and leaned forward when he felt his spleen twist into a neat bow, his bile ducts became detached like garden hoses and sprayed the inside of his abdominal cavity. He was rejoined, reformed, and bolstered by the intimate knowledge that he could create a future from a place of his own wants and desires.</p>
<p>He was drawn from the thoughts of his past and present as his shoulder ached from where the bullet was lodged under the clavicle. Bane patted a side pocket on his tactical pants and pulled out a folded utility knife with various other implements, most sharp or curved. He unfolded the tweezers and depressed a dark green button behind his left ear, he could feel his eyes dilate and vibrate in their sockets as the bubblegum sweet narcotic aerosol filled his lungs and coated his nerve receptors with a sweet, sticky buffer. </p>
<p>Bane dug around inside the bullet hole, failing to grasp the bullet that was slick with blood and other viscous fluids. He gave a ragged exhale as he finally gripped the bullet and pulled it free to land like a misshapen marble on the metal floor of the cargo plane.</p>
<p>He shoved a few square alcohol saturated gauze pads in the weeping, aggravated wound and shoddily wrapped a cotton bandage around his muscular shoulder and curved deltoid. </p>
<p>The monotony of the rest of the flight combined with coming down from his high, allowed Bane to nap lightly, the turbulence like being soothed and rocked back to sleep in the arms of death. </p>
<p>As the Learjet carrying Barsad and Lilliana began its final descent to Sinclair’s private and immaculately maintained airfield, Lilliana pressed Barsad for answers.</p>
<p>“Where are we going?” she asked, growing more strident as the jet descended. </p>
<p>“India,” Barsad finally said and leaned his head back against the plush seat, too much alcohol had made the altitude get to his gut and he was certain if he moved or <br/>spoke too much, he would puke a bellyful of scotch and gastric juice into his lap.</p>
<p>“India? India! What is waiting on the runway?”</p>
<p>Barsad shrugged, “I honestly don’t know,” he admitted. “Probably some rich fuck with guns and the right friends.”</p>
<p>Lilliana crossed her arms when it became apparent her kerchiefed captor was not going to be much more forthcoming. </p>
<p>The young heiress pouted as the Learjet’s front wheels eventually touched down on the freshly paved asphalt with a gentle bump.</p>
<p>Barsad groaned as the movement made acid race up his throat and he stifled a hot burp behind his hand. </p>
<p>He couldn’t help but smirk to see Lilliana sulking.</p>
<p>As Lilliana’s curiosity at the world outside the jet outweighed her pouting and she pressed her face to the oval window, back in Gotham City, Selina, Blake, and Gordon all raced in separate siren-screaming vehicles to Wayne Enterprises when the sea of vehicles departed and headed in every possible direction. </p>
<p>The three of them as well as a slew of Gotham officers stormed the building and spread out. They exchanged gunfire with the armed men remaining in the building, left to their own devices when Talia was discovered dead and the reactor missing. </p>
<p>A good amount of time passed until the building was secured. The smell of singed human tissue from the dining hall was heavy in the air as it was cordoned off and the coroner called. </p>
<p>As Lilliana reluctantly followed Barsad to the front of the Learjet and waited for the staircase to deploy, still high in the sky, hours, and hours behind but moving forward through time zones, Bane anxiously tapped his fingers on top of the bench seat and forced himself to check that his firearms were loaded, and that the safeties were clicked off. He fiddled with a couple of his throwing knives, needing to keep his hands busy as he longed to see that Lilliana had arrived at the lavish villa that was adjacent to the Mehrangarh Fort in India.</p>
<p>A sprawling villa that his billionaire acquaintance owned and from the very rooftop could see The Pit, where Bane was born to suffer in the infernal darkness that was alive with flesh-eating nightmarish shadows come to life.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Penitent Fragmented Chromosomes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Barsad stomped heavily down the metal staircase as it folded out of the Learjet and looked back, squinting up as the sun high overhead nearly blinded him. </p>
<p>Barsad felt himself flood with a cornucopia of emotions as Lilliana descended the stairs and joined him, keeping a fair amount of space between them. He looked at her as she was trying to see in every direction at once before gesturing towards the waiting sedans.</p>
<p>Two impeccably dressed men who had triple digit kills between them, held open the rear doors of the sparkling, horsepower laden big-block engine vehicles. </p>
<p>Lilliana felt instantly comfortably having her door opened for her and the familiar feel of the backs of her bare thighs sliding along the supple leather bench seat. She instinctively reached for and smiled when her hand landed on a bottle of purified water.</p>
<p>As Lilliana sank into the orthopedic seat with the seat warmers, not needed with the arid day but nice when they’re needed.</p>
<p>Barsad was kindly directed to the second car and forced to ride with several armed ex-special forces on the way to Sinclair Jopha’s villa. </p>
<p>Barsad spent the car ride drinking more, making his nausea nauseated as the miles passed under the thick tread of the tires.  </p>
<p>Lilliana looked through the heavily tinted windows and crossed her long, lean legs as a quiet female whose cheek was blemished by a jagged scar, gave Lilliana a tight, pleasant smile but otherwise remained wordless. The woman was on edge as she had been given strict orders to protect whoever disembarked the plane with Barsad.</p>
<p>Sinclair had grown immensely curious at Bane’s request for an anonymous cloak for himself and he was anxious to get his eyes on Bane’s plus one.</p>
<p>As Barsad and Lilliana were escorted to Sinclair’s villa, high in the sky, currently at a cruising altitude higher than Mt. Everest, Bane shifted on the cargo plane’s uncomfortable seat and slipped a hand into the pocket of his heavy coat he had slipped back into. His ragged cuticles snagged on the jewelry he had forced Lilliana to hand over.</p>
<p>Bane dropped a delicate gold tennis bracelet into his palm, the diamonds were flawless against his rough palm. He added an oval emerald ring next to the bracelet, pressing his lips together behind his mask as he traced the pad of his thumb over the dazzling gem.  </p>
<p>“Is she hiding more jewelry?” his mind threw at him and painted a false memory of her shoving necklaces and earrings into what he imagined were lacy, minuscule panties and filling the smooth satin cups of her bra molded against her full breasts.</p>
<p>As soon as Lilliana and Barsad exited the spacious sedans, the facial recognition software that Sinclair had built-in to his security system captured their faces. The software Sinclair had his hands on was better than that of Gotham City’s police budget.</p>
<p>As the computer shuffled through the dark web, Interpol and other known resources, Sinclair left his security team to be happy in their work as he went to greet his impromptu guests. </p>
<p>Lillianna slid out of the car when the unnamed dangerous female opened her door for her. </p>
<p>Lillianna frowned at the woman and froze for a second, unsure of leaving the perceived safety of the climate-controlled car. The battle-scarred woman held out her hand towards Lillianna who after a very long pause, reluctantly let the woman assist her from the car.</p>
<p>Lillianna was met at the bottom of the stairs by a pair of teenage girls who had a glass of crystal-clear water and held a ceramic bowl of sticky sweet, chunked pineapple and luscious wedges of guava.</p>
<p>Sinclair affixed a disarming smile on his face and slipped into his most gracious skin suit as he greeted the young heiress.</p>
<p>Sinclair didn’t need the facial recognition software results for the identification of the beautiful woman he walked towards.<br/>
He recognized her immediately.</p>
<p>Sinclair smiled and spoke amiably even as his mind replayed the memory of seeing a younger Lilliana walking the runway in a beauty pageant, wearing a seafoam aqua bikini and silver, sequined heels.</p>
<p>Sinclair had been attending the pageant in order to meet with a fellow arms dealer, the meeting had a goal of forging an alliance between India and Russia, cutting out the middlemen and their gouging percentages of the pie for very little risk.</p>
<p>Sinclair had grown tired of the toll-takers and his driver’s being shaken down at the borders. He was lucky to stumble across another billionaire who was equally angry about giving away even an extra ruble.</p>
<p>Lilliana shook Sinclair’s hand, not realizing the man with the creased corners of his eyes from smiling so much, had seen her on stage years before while talking to her father and arranging a multi-million-dollar ammunition deal while she paraded her young body around, Vaseline coating her teeth, so her lips effortlessly curled upwards. </p>
<p>Sinclair summoned a flurry of lively dressed young women to escort Lilliana to a private bedroom suite with spacious attached bathroom. Lilliana was pleased to have the attention and soon smell the French perfume and obscenely expensive bergamot talc she had sent in from Milan daubed on her wrists. </p>
<p>As Lilliana got settled, cleaned, well-fed and comfortable, the cargo plane with Bane drew closer and began its final descent. </p>
<p>Lilliana relaxed on a silk chaise lounge and watched Sinclair’s son play soccer, eventually falling into a light nap. As the cargo plane’s wheel touched down, Sinclair slipped into his private office and made a succinct phone call to a number known only by a handful of people, one being the Underboss of the Russian Mafia.  </p>
<p>“Da?” Viktor answered, drunk and sitting naked on the edge of his bed. He had just vomited on the dark wood floor before Sinclair’s call.</p>
<p>“I found your lost kitten,” Sinclair started before he instantly had Viktor’s attention, his intoxication forgotten for a moment as he ran his big toe through his still hot vomit to note the location of his beloved daughter. </p>
<p>After Viktor ended the call, he cleaned up and soon had himself looking spiffy in his charcoal grey tailored suit, not like a man who had just been covered with his own body waste and painting in his own vomit with his big toe and thick ingrown nail. As Viktor gestured for Yuri to bring around the car, hours away, the heavy staircase opened from the thick body of the cargo plane and Bane and the other men loaded up a couple trucks with the liberated toys from Applied Sciences.</p>
<p>Sinclair had provided heavy fire power and air support as the whole group departed the airfield. </p>
<p>The drive to the villa seemed to take longer than it ever had. A group of camels slowed their progress, and the driver took a wrong turn and they got stuck in a dead end that backed up to a bustling bazaar.</p>
<p>Sinclair’s sprawling villa finally came into view and Bane had to restrain himself from jumping out of the moving vehicle and crawling on his hands and knees up the stone steps.</p>
<p>Sinclair Jopha walked out and met Bane. He held his arms out wide, “bhai, it’s been too long,” he bellowed and threw his arms around Bane.</p>
<p>Bane clapped Sinclair on the back and the two men exchanged small talk until his patience wore thin. “Did Miss Kozlov arrive safely?”</p>
<p>Sinclair chuckled, “you always bring me challenges bhai but yes she is fine. Come, she’s just outside with my little ones.”</p>
<p>Bane followed Sinclair to a spacious kidney-shaped pool, surrounded by blue mosaic tiles where three of Sinclair’s children were running around with half a dozen German Shepherds.</p>
<p>Bane heard his blood rushing through his arteries and engorging his veins as his eyes fell on Lilliana. She had her hair down, wearing a light gauzy gown, dancing in slow circles holding Sinclair’s youngest daughter.</p>
<p>Lilliana turned when she heard Sinclair’s booming voice. She met Bane’s eyes and set down the little girl that she’d been holding. The shy child tucked a native lotus blossom behind Lilliana’s ear before she ran off with one of the many dogs.</p>
<p>Sinclair watched Bane walk to where Lilliana was standing and whistled for his children and staff to scatter and left them to their privacy.</p>
<p>“You are well?” Bane asked as he got within hearing range of Lilliana. </p>
<p>She nodded, “yes, fine, thank you.”</p>
<p>Bane’s silent scrutiny made her feel like squirming. “How long do I have to stay here?” Lilliana bluntly asked. </p>
<p>He smiled behind his mask, not really hearing her words as his eyes danced over the lines and curves of her face, wanting to sweep her up into his arms. In the immediacy, he closed his hands into loose fists, “a couple days at least.”</p>
<p>“Then what?” she pressed.</p>
<p>Bane looked at her, she blinked first and looked away, crossing the mosaic floor to the fully stocked glass-backed bar.</p>
<p>Bane watched her make herself a coffee cocktail with sweet liquor and topped it with whipped cream. </p>
<p>Lilliana didn’t feel his eyes memorizing her as she took a slow sip, she didn’t see him tip forward into a state of entrancement when his eyes zeroed in on a touch of whipped cream perched on her upper lip when she lowered the glass. </p>
<p>In the very moment before her pink tongue darted out and licked away the kiss of the sweet cream, he was transfixed. Bane’s heart was momentarily paralyzed before adrenaline flooded his system. His chest tightened and for a second he forgot to breathe, emotions infiltrated his system and filled each cell until they threatened to burst. “I’ll do anything you ask to have you,” Bane thought as his gallbladder released bitter bile and the bottom dropped out of his gut as Lilliana  looked over and caught him staring. </p>
<p>Bane’s eyes dilated as her sudden and full attention stimulated each of his ropy nerve endings. </p>
<p>“Did you say something?”</p>
<p>“Did I say that out loud?” Bane thought, questioning himself, a rarity.</p>
<p>Bane felt like he had been sucker punched when he felt doubt began to threaten to poke his eyes out, he was at once the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus. </p>
<p>General Crassus said that doubt was the true enemy of man.</p>
<p>“Where are you planning on taking me next?”</p>
<p>“Where would you like to go?”</p>
<p>Lilliana blinked hard and chuckled before she took a few sips of the hot boozy coffee, anxious for the alcohol’s soothing touch on her nervous system. </p>
<p>“I’d like to go home; I think that should be pretty obvious.”</p>
<p>“That’s not going to be possible, what’s your second choice?”</p>
<p>“Please stop this game playing, just tell me what you have planned.”</p>
<p>“I assure you I’m not playing games with you.”</p>
<p>“Then where are we going? What are your long-term plans here?” Lilliana spit out before taking fast sips of her alcoholic coffee. </p>
<p>Bane ran his eyes down the front of her body and settled on her bare feet and her pearl pink lacquered toenails as he spoke. </p>
<p>“We’ll start over, start new somewhere else.”</p>
<p>“We?” Lilliana managed with a mostly steady voice. </p>
<p>Bane saw Lilliana’s eyes dart around him, knowing there was nowhere past him. Outside the villa, there was only the promise of death from inside haunted sandcastles. </p>
<p>He held his hands out to the sides as Lilliana never looked away from him as she fumbled her hand on the bar top until she could grab a slender bottle of shiraz. </p>
<p>Bane held up a hand reflexively as Lilliana’s ethereal face became etched in fury, he felt the sudden, overwhelming weight of meeting the eyes of a god. It was too much for him to handle and his fragmented chromosomes became penitent.</p>
<p>“Poshel na khuy,” (fuck you) Lilliana shouted as the bottle shattered to the tile in front of his feet, the red wine spilling like he’d been eviscerated.</p>
<p>Lilliana reached for another bottle and ratcheted her non-athletic arm back to try for a Cy Young winning pitch when Sinclair’s boisterous voice broke the tension and paused Lilliana’s throw. </p>
<p>“Please, please, let’s all move this somewhere else please, the children are still awake.”</p>
<p>Lilliana shook her head, flushing in embarrassment at her baseborn behavior. “Of course, please forgive my spectacle. If it’s alright, I think I’d like to call it a night?”</p>
<p>Sinclair half-bowed. “Certainly,” he purred and snapped his fingers for yet another teenage girl in a belly-baring skirt and beaded top appeared to escort Lilliana to her spacious bedroom suite. </p>
<p>Bane wanted to keep Lilliana from leaving but also knew from a single look at her glassy, wide eyes that she needed to sleep before anything else. </p>
<p>The two men watched Lilliana being led away before Sinclair retrieved the bottle she was going to throw next. He smiled down at the vintage and gestured to the large patio, the misting system keeping it intermittently tropical, soothing, and constantly exotic. </p>
<p>“Please bhai, we have much to discuss.”</p>
<p>Bane nodded in agreement and followed the billionaire to the slick tile of the patio, anxious to close this chapter of his life. He could feel the depths of The Pit calling to him and forced himself to focus on Sinclair and how a new life was possible, a reincarnation while being within a stone’s throw of his own open grave.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Imminent Expiration</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lilliana was led away to a spacious, airy downstairs bedroom suite, while outside on the tiled patio the bloated moon began to rise high overhead. The moonlight made the quartz chips in the earth glow around the sprawling villa as Sinclair led Bane to a private sitting area, delicate, pink bougainvillea bushes shrouded the two men with their lush blossoms. The plant with origins in South America, thrived in India’s climate.</p>
<p>“Bhai do you know who that is?” Sinclair murmured as he lit the end of a fat, phallic cigar and gestured to where Lilliana had just been standing, threatening to whip a vintage bottle at him. </p>
<p>Bane crossed his arms over his broad chest and watched Sinclair pour a glass of red wine before adding. </p>
<p>“Her father will burn this world down to find her, I just can’t make her disappear.”</p>
<p>Bane scoffed melodically. “Are you admitting to failure before you’ve attempted seddik? (friend)</p>
<p>Sinclair inhaled the cigar’s pungent smoke deep into his lungs, anger breaking though and creasing his Botox-manipulated face before he spoke.</p>
<p>Bane felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand at end when he saw the slightest of tension pass through Sinclair even as he tried to appear casual while exhaling. </p>
<p>“What did you do seddik?” Bane asked with a melodically measured tone. </p>
<p>Sinclair again tried to project remorse and failed as he shrugged. “I called her father, he’s on his way with some of his friends, I had to bhai, I owe Viktor a lot,” he began to babble as he tried to explain the delicate balance the two men had on running drugs, people and guns and were discussing diving into the depraved, toxic opiate trade. </p>
<p>Bane grew still as he heard the slightest air exchange from an armed man who had approached near silently from the right before he attacked. </p>
<p>Sinclair nearly choked on the dregs of his smoky exhale as Bane moved with speed seen only in apex predators catching and trussing prey on the flatlands. </p>
<p>Bane dropped heavily to one knee as he spun and jabbed out with his left hand, his fingers curled tightly around the hilt of a stiletto blade. The deeply sun-kissed man could only grunt as Bane buried the blade deep in his belly, slicing through his liver, blood and bile covered Bane’s fist as he pulled the blade back and slashed the man’s throat for fun as he rose to his feet. </p>
<p>Bane grunted as a bullet hit his midsection as another man fired at him from beyond the wall of camouflaging pink petals.  Bane capitalized on the shooter’s youth and inexperience and soon had his own firearm pulled. Three pulls of the trigger had the man-boy on the ground, twitching as his body wound down, a little young clock with a feebly remaining heartbeat.</p>
<p>Bane whipped around to face Sinclair, the gun raised, his finger on the trigger, seven bullets remaining in the magazine.</p>
<p>“You need to stop this bhai,” Sinclair babbled. “You’re only making it worse. I’m sorry, I had to do what was best. I can’t let you take Viktor’s daughter,” he added as he kept his hands raised, visibly shaking. </p>
<p>“Why is that seddik?”</p>
<p>“Well because, you’re, well I mean she’s just,” Sinclair tried and failed to put anything coherent together. He reverted to another tactic. “Please bhai, my children, my wives, please.”</p>
<p>“Why should I not be allowed to take the heiress with me?”</p>
<p>“Bhai please, you’re the one person I would trust in any battle, strategy and even being dropped into the jungle with, but,” Sinclair paused and licked his dry lips as he continued. “But she’s clean, fragile, delicate, you’re more soldier than man. All that time in The Pit, some of the stories must be true.”</p>
<p>“Of what stories are you referring?” Bane asked in an empty tone, knowing of many countless tales of his dominance on a global encompassing scale. </p>
<p>Sinclair tried to look embarrassed as he spoke. “You know, being raised down there, no women. You can’t really function in that department; you know they’re just stories though. If it’s women you want, I got a new shipment, they’re all cleaned up, you can one or all,” he pleaded. </p>
<p>Bane narrowed his eyes and couldn’t help but chuckle. </p>
<p>Sinclair falsely found the chuckle disarming. </p>
<p>“Do you have an identity prepared for me?”</p>
<p>Bane lifted his free hand and fiddled with a dial on the back of his mask as he continued. “Did you make a new identity for Ms. Kozlov even to continue this ruse?” he asked as he took a deep inhale, the air tasting heavily of melted spoons. </p>
<p>Sinclair’s ego made him nod before he actually heard the words. “Of course, every set is its own unique challenge,” he sniffed.</p>
<p>Bane smiled behind his mask as he pulled the trigger four times and Sinclair’s face disappeared into chunks of blood and brain that starkly resembled fruit-filled cherry pastries. </p>
<p>Bane didn’t have much time to watch Sinclair’s body pump out the rest of his life blood as he had to empty his gun at another youthful marauder. </p>
<p>Barsad’s voice come from the other side of the thick floral wall as another flurry of gunfire was exchanged. </p>
<p>Bane nodded a greeting to Barsad when he found the bright-eyed soldier using his red handkerchief to wipe blood out of his eyes a kill that became messier when it was close to the heart.</p>
<p>Bane returned to the confines of the rest of the unscathed bullet-riddled pink blossoms and stared down at the arms dealer body. The gunfire was much less as Bane’s men and the couple on board with Barsad secured the rest of house. </p>
<p>Lilliana’s bedroom was so far from the massacre, she slept through Bane and his men engaging in a blood-spilling brawl on the slick, wet mosaic tiles. Blood turning the pristinely white grout red. </p>
<p>Bane looked out at The Pit, dominant against the landscape even in the dark. He spoke without turning around to his brothers-in-blood. “Kill them all and dump their bodies in The Pit.”</p>
<p>“Even the children?” Barsad asked.</p>
<p>Bane nodded, “they will grow to be adults.”</p>
<p>Some time passed as Bane paced the bloody patio, tracking his boot prints with each step as he kept his muscular arms crossed over his broad chest as he stared at The Pit, his birthplace in front of him. He clenched his teeth until his jaw clicked melodically through the front of the mask as he stared down the place he was supposed to have died and decayed, becoming debris to swirl with the sand and irritate people’s eyes, calling forth involuntary tears for the perpetually suffering. </p>
<p>Barsad spoke lowly with a few men who then followed him to Bane in his room of gun powder scented blossoms. Bane pulled open the zipper of a leather satchel and extracted a few stacks of large bills. </p>
<p>As the moon moved directly overhead, Bane paid off each of the militants after they killed nearly all life remaining in the villa. </p>
<p>Lilliana slept peacefully through the genocide of the household and their bodies carted to the pit. Bane nodded to one of the men he had brought with him from Gotham City who carried out his own special variation to Talia’s plan. </p>
<p>Bane looked over at Barsad as he held his stack of cash close to his side but seemed on the verge of speaking. </p>
<p>“What do you need brother?”</p>
<p>“You’re really taking off with that broad?”</p>
<p>Bane narrowed his eyes. “That’s a problem for you?”</p>
<p>Barsad couldn’t completely conceal his eyes from filling with the unspoken. Bane heard what was never supposed to be said and in that moment knew his theory would land somewhere to the right of the truth. </p>
<p>“You’ve acted foolishly,” Bane said as he watched Barsad’s shoulders stiffen before he spoke, too quickly and out-of-sync. </p>
<p>“What are you talking about?” he asked turning his attention to flipping through the stacks of cash, rich with the smell of blood money. </p>
<p>“Did you touch her?”</p>
<p>Barsad chuckled, “no I kept my hands off your little plaything but if I knew this was coming I would’ve fucked her.”</p>
<p>Bane stayed still and silent as Barsad turned, smirking as his eyes twinkled with amusement. “You play this goddamn role, but you’re not different,” he muttered and shook his head. </p>
<p>“What role is that brother?” Bane asked with some genuine interest.</p>
<p>“You try to pretend you’re different than the rest of us. We all take lives and destroy civilizations; we just don’t think that fucking a random gash means anything.”</p>
<p>Bane stood up straighter, his spine aching in protest at the pressure. “It is only in part to our past that I’m going to tell you to leave here immediately, find somewhere else to serve.”</p>
<p>Barsad regarded Bane, knowing full well he should be grateful for the hand stamp to bypass a bloody, painful death. </p>
<p>Barsad gave Bane a stiff nod and marched away, only have a few paltry belongings to gather. </p>
<p>Bane watched him stomp away, his fingers ached to drop Barsad as he retreated and truss him up before letting his flayed corpse be at half-mast on the flagpole to greet the following day. His hands practically grew mouths so they could scream in frustration as Bane let Barsad go, almost every part of him wanted to rip Barsad apart until every red blood cell was categorized by size, circumference, and molecular weight. </p>
<p>The part that kept him from running after Barsad was asleep in the spacious downstairs suite, tucked under three-thousand thread count linen. Lilliana was oblivious to the sudden population plunge as she slept. </p>
<p>Lilliana slept during the trip through the event horizon of Bane’s engulfing power as he followed the part of him that remained without ill intent. Bane walked with purpose to Lilliana’s room as a man without ponderance of how many seconds it would take for one to pass from a severed carotid artery. The few armed men that remained bumped chests as they stuffed the fat stacks of cash in their hip and side pockets as they made a beeline to the bar.</p>
<p>At one of the utility vehicles in the gated entrance of the Villa. Barsad turned the key and let the big engine roar to life as he fought to shake his erratic thoughts.

</p><p>Barsad knew that he was lucky in more ways than he could ever manifest that Bane had given him a pass.  He clenched his hands around the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white as he let himself play a hypothetical scenario of returning to the Villa and taking Bane’s rich pussy away from him. Barsad felt his cock start to tingle with raw want when he fantasized hobbling Bane enough that he had to watch him shove his cock deep up Lilliana’s ass. </p>
<p>Barsad shook his head and blew out a sharp breath. “Come on you stupid fuck, you need to get out of here,” he finally said and navigated the large utility vehicle back to the airstrip where he would eventually get himself to South America. He was always lucky and fell into some kind of employment, paid in cash upon receipt of body counts, diamonds or human hearts.  </p>
<p>As Bane paused outside the double doors of Lilliana’s bedroom suite, back in Gotham City, Blake and Selina took the stairs two at a time towards Applied Sciences with Gordon hot on their heels.</p>
<p>“Goddammit, check your corners,” Gordon shouted as he watched the cat and hothead burst into rooms and hallways without a casual glance. </p>
<p>Gordon was slowed down as a masked militant flew from an open doorway and tackled him, his service pistol flying ten feet away.</p>
<p>Selina and Blake didn’t pause as they burst into Applied Sciences, both had guns drawn with the safeties off as their eyes moved in stereo around the large, high-ceilinged room.</p>
<p>Selina sprinted over to Talia’s fallen form, drool rolling in thick ribbons from her slack lips, rigor mortis had come and went and left bacteria blooming in her dead bowels. </p>
<p>“What is that? Blake asked as he looked over Selina’s shoulder at a square panel in Talia’s dead hands, it would’ve been a tablet if not for it being too thick. </p>
<p>Selina frowned as she wrestled the object from Talia’s deathly grip, her floppy hands clutching the plastic. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Blake’s forehead mirrored Selina’s as he frowned when she turned the object over and it showed an active countdown in red numerics.</p>
<p>“5.”</p>
<p>"Is that?” Blake started to say.</p>
<p>“4.”</p>
<p>“Wait,” Selina whispered.</p>
<p>“3.”</p>
<p>“Is that in seconds?” Blake asked.</p>
<p>“2.”</p>
<p>Selina closed her eyes and let the plastic fall to land on Talia’s dead bloated belly, a toxic belch emerging from her.</p>
<p>“1.”</p>
<p>Out in the hallway, Gordon was eventually able to retrieve a small .38 he had tucked in his boot and filled the masked man’s belly with five lead specials. As he caught his breath, severely winded from the unaccustomed hand-to-hand aside from some friendly boxing at the gym, a shout was forced from him when the doors to Applied Sciences were blown open from the force of the blast. Forensics and the bomb squad would only find wet bits with such fragmented DNA that it made identification difficult. </p>
<p>Gordon watched the flames lick the ceiling and then be contained and eventually subsided when the sprinkler system doused the fire. “Hothead,” he groaned.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Real Identity: Unavailable</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As the moon kissed the darkness of The Pit and lit up the recently deceased human-rights violator’s Villa, Bane gently pushed open the door to Lilliana’s bedroom suite, his senses at high alert as he scanned the dim room. He blew out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding when his eyes landed on her sleeping form. </p>
<p>Lilliana was laying on her side, facing away from him under the three-thousand thread count bed linen. </p>
<p>He walked over to the bed and stared down at her, the linen had shifted and left the line of her leg bared to his gaze. Even in the dim room, the Venom enhanced the function of the rods and cones of his eyes and he could see the strong, steady pulse in the smooth skin on the top of her foot. </p>
<p>He settled on the edge of the bed and tugged the sheet off her shoulder, letting it slide free and expose the bare skin of her back which was left uncovered in the nightgown one of Sinclair’s wives had left out for her. </p>
<p>Bane salivated behind his mask as he watched goose bumps sprout up when the open window sent a breeze across the naked skin of her back. </p>
<p>He reached out to touch her enticing naked skin and paused when his eyes fell on his filthy fingernails. Even in the dim, moon lit room, he could see his ragged cuticles and gunk in the scarred, creases of his hands. </p>
<p>Bane crept to the spacious bathroom and kept the lights off as he scrubbed his hands and face, rinsing with the brisk water from the brushed platinum faucet.</p>
<p>He looked up and met his masked reflection, seeing dirt ground into the creases of his skin and smears of blood on every patch of his exposed skin. </p>
<p>Bane gripped the edge of the sink as he stared at the water swirling down the drain as Sinclair’s ugly words reverberated in his skull.</p>
<p>“She’s clean, you’re…”</p>
<p>He growled softly, a musical whisper slipping through the front of his mask as he ran a hot bath and scrubbed himself clean, drying off briskly with the plush towels. </p>
<p>He plucked a fresh towel from the wrought-iron towel rod and wrapped it around his waist.  </p>
<p>Bane exited the bathroom and paused when he saw Lilliana sitting up among the decadent nest of sheets.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry I woke you,” Bane surprised himself by mumbling. </p>
<p>Lilliana shook her head, “I’ve been sleeping way too much since I got here.”</p>
<p>Lilliana couldn’t help but flinch when Bane dug into the pocket of his thick coat pocket, thinking this was the moment she was going to die. </p>
<p>Bane took a small step forward and dropped the handful of her jewelry she had hidden on the bed in front of her. </p>
<p>He stared at her vulnerable sigh of relief when she plucked a simple gold band from the sparkling pile. Bane watched her press her lips to the ring before she slid it around the middle finger of her right hand .</p>
<p>Lilliana was drawn down memory lane with the simple band that had existed in her family for three generations before her. </p>
<p>As Lilliana swirled the ring around her finger, hours and hours away nearing its cruising altitude, Viktor and Yuri outlined the seek and destroy plan for saving his beloved daughter from an unknown fate. Viktor tuned out Yuri’s third scenario run through as he stared down at the gold ring’s partner around his pinkie. </p>
<p>His great-grandfather had come across the two gold rings by accident and used them to parlay future for the Kozlov family. He had them engraved rabota i smert’. (Work and Death.)</p>
<p>As Viktor turned his head and stared out of the oval window, back in the moonlit Villa, Bane’s voice broke into Lilliana’s memory as she was nestled among the supple bed linen. </p>
<p>“We’re leaving sooner than I anticipated.”</p>
<p>“I can’t leave my father, my home, everything I know,” Lilliana started to say before her voice broke and she turned away from Bane.</p>
<p>Bane watched her shoulders shake as she tried to suppress her sobs. </p>
<p>“I’ll do anything to make you stop crying,” Bane said on a low melodical murmur as he settled on the bed and closed the distance between them until there was but an arms-length of space between them.</p>
<p>Lilliana shook her head and sniffed hard as she fumbled for a square paper napkin to wipe her eyes. </p>
<p>She looked up and met his reflection in the glass doors of the wall-length closet. “There have to be other women that would want this, other women who can give you what you want.”</p>
<p>Bane closed the remaining space between them and settled a hand on either side of her, his strong hands pressing into the linen. Their bodies were a breath away from touching as he whispered melodically behind her.</p>
<p>“Don’t begin to compare yourself to anyone else, not only is that an insult to yourself but there is no one of your equal,” he growled and raised a hand to lightly drag his fingers through the length of her hair. </p>
<p>Lilliana couldn’t help but shiver as he dropped his face close to the curve of her neck, his exhale hot through the front of his mask as she felt his strong fingers start at the crown of her head and trace the silken lengths until they stopped before the curve of her bottom.</p>
<p>Lilliana heard him groan lightly and looked up to see his reflected hand as he fumbled at his shoulder, she noticed the stiff, blood encrusted bandage shoddily applied. </p>
<p>“Do you need a hand with that?” she murmured.</p>
<p>Bane nodded and held his breath as Lilliana stood and returned to the bathroom where he had absently left the faucet dripping. She soaped up a rag and returned to stand in front of him. </p>
<p>Lilliana felt herself lapse into a trance as she wiped the edges of the towel over the entrance wound and heard a low, mechanical escape through the front of his mask. </p>
<p>Bane met her eyes, “please continue.”</p>
<p>Lilliana pressed her lips together as she soaked a couple cotton balls with a pink antiseptic. She glanced at his masked face before dabbing the saturated cotton against his damaged skin. </p>
<p>Bane kept his discomfort to himself, distracted by the gentle pressure of her touch. </p>
<p>Lilliana let her eyes wander over the smooth cap of his muscular shoulder and narrowed her eyes at the thick ridges of scars that crawled like disjoined fingers over his dense flesh. </p>
<p>Bane flinched and started to move away when Lilliana smoothed her thumb down a prominent ridge of scar tissue.</p>
<p>“Shhhh,” she muttered as Bane stayed rigid under her seeking touch. Bane remained frozen as Lilliana slipped behind him and smoothed her hands move over the wings of his shoulder blades before she rubbed her thumbs in clockwise circles around each protruding vertebral knob down the length of his spine, pausing over the intersections of raised scar tissue.</p>
<p>“The disfigurement doesn’t disgust you?” Bane asked on a cautious melodic whisper.</p>
<p>“Of course not,” Lilliana tisked.</p>
<p>“This sort of malformation doesn’t belong in your undiluted seas,” Bane murmured, thinking of Talia’s eyes slide over his damaged skin and have nausea bloom in her belly. </p>
<p>“You don’t know anything about me,” Lilliana said softly.</p>
<p>“What do I not know?”</p>
<p>Lilliana chuckled, “a lot, but I’m sure you didn’t know my sister had spinal meningitis and died young.”</p>
<p>Bane listened to Lilliana’s even breathing as she massaged the dense muscles and poorly stitched together and healed flesh. </p>
<p>“She was a broken little thing, but daddy had a custom bed made for her,” Lilliana murmured and trailed off as she got lost in a memory. “Amelia always smelled like vinegar from scrubbing the sweat stains out of the pink silk bedding,” she added sadly. </p>
<p>They were both quiet, Lilliana was trapped in the past and Bane was lost in the feel of her small hands moving across the naked skin of his back. </p>
<p>Bane raised his eyes slowly to meet hers in the mirror as she spoke. “I can’t leave my father; I don’t have anyone else.”</p>
<p>“You will have me, and I will have you,” he murmured. “We’ll be starting a new journey together.”</p>
<p>Lilliana paused her hands on his wide shoulders as she looked down. “I don’t get it, what’s the punchline?”</p>
<p>“There’s nothing complicated about it, we’ll be leaving here tonight and begin anew,” he stated in a simple, beautiful tone. </p>
<p>Lilliana shook her head as she struggled to find and form her words. “Together? I don’t understand, this isn’t about a ransom?”</p>
<p>Bane chuckled in an all-masculine tone that made her uterine walls quicken and stimulate her ovarian follicles as though she was a fucking cat.</p>
<p>“No, I don’t need your money.”</p>
<p>“Then what are you getting out of all of this?” Lilliana asked with genuine confusion as her eyebrows pulled into a frown and she met his eyes again in the mirror. </p>
<p>“I get you,” Bane stated mechanically and as though it should have been an obvious, blinking light, sign surrounded fact. </p>
<p>Lilliana blinked as her eyes refilled with hot tears. She began to lift a hand to wipe at her face when his eyes never left their reflection as he snaked a hand up to close around her retreating wrist. </p>
<p>Bane tightened his grip as she tried to futilely tug her hand free. He traced his thumb over the plain gold band and held eye contact with her reflection as he spoke. </p>
<p>“This needs to stay behind.”</p>
<p>Lilliana shook her head with such vigor her long hair flew around her in a silken halo, “my father knows I’d never take this off if I was alive,” she protested as he turned to face her on the bed. He kept his hold on her wrist tight as he whispered lowly and melodically. </p>
<p>“Then your father will think you are gone from this world when he finds it here.”</p>
<p>Lilliana’s mouth parted and she forgot to breathe for a second. “What’s your real name?” she whispered. “Not the stuff on tv, who are you really?”</p>
<p>Bane whispered his true name before he watched and waited for a reaction, she was a test subject, and no one knew if she was getting the placebo or PCP. </p>
<p>Lilliana breathed his name on a shuddering exhale.</p>
<p>Bane lost any control he thought he had fooled himself into thinking he had when the moonlight shone on her full lips as she whispered his true identify aloud.</p>
<p>Bane turned and half-rose so he could get a better hold on Lilliana as he forced a startled cry from her slim throat as he pulled her into his arms and crushed her against the front of his body with such enthusiasm that her breath was roughly shoved out of her lungs.</p>
<p>“Oh,” Lilliana managed as Bane shifted them around until she was staring up at him as his strong hands seemed to be everywhere at once as he pulled her thighs <br/>tight to either side of his waist before he tore her nightgown into silky scraps.</p>
<p>Bane’s central nervous system was buzzing as he was overwhelmed with her bare flesh suddenly underneath him, he looked down the front of her body to her bare femininity and soft, shell pink lips hiding her tight, wet center. He settled back on his heels and smoothed his large hands up the insides of her thighs as he caught her eyes.  </p>
<p>“This will serve as the start of our life as one,” Bane stated melodically, struggling to keep his tone steady as he smoothed his hand from the inside of her thigh to splay open on the smooth skin of her lower belly. His thumb teased the dip of her belly button before he moved his other hand to pull the plush towel free, reaching for his rapidly hardening cock as he asked on a strangled gasp. “Will you willingly give me all of yourself, starting right now with your body?”</p>
<p>A billion thoughts flung themselves at Lilliana as she lay open and exposed to Bane’s eyes. She couldn’t think as she watched him stroke the thick length of his cock to painful hardness, pre-cum glistened as he stroked his shaft.</p>
<p>“Am I leaving here to go to my death?” Lilliana breathed, her whole-body trembling as Bane slipped the thumb of his free hand to tease her intimate slit and began slow clockwise circles against her clit, urging the flesh to peak sensitivity. </p>
<p>“No, you’re leaving here to begin living,” Bane groaned, aching to plunge inside her. </p>
<p>He felt a surge of lust as Lilliana sagged back against the bed, some of the tension in her thighs lessening as she nodded, feeling herself blush as her eyes kept landing on his thick hardness. </p>
<p>The only man she’d ever shared her bed with Robert Carrington had a huge bank account, long yacht and smoked girthy imported cigars but had a roll of nickels that imitated a roll of quarters when he was excited.</p>
<p>Bane shifted and rested most of his weight on his elbows as he gripped his cock and moved the soft, sensitive head up and down her slit and bobbed at her tight, wet opening. Lilliana let her thighs open further as he met her eyes and thrust inside her and pounded erratically until he could corral his overexuberance. He watched Lilliana’s beautiful face crease with unspoken discomfort as he roughly plunged into her as though there was a clock counting down to the end of his life and he wanted to be buried inside her when death found him.</p>
<p>Lilliana gasped at the end of each of his deep thrusts as he seated himself as far as he could until he was stopped by their intimate flesh kissing. </p>
<p>“Surrender,” Bane ordered musically as he slid a large hand to cup the back of his skull and forced her to stay trapped in the intensity of his gaze. “Surrender,” he begged melodically as he pressed his palm over Lilliana’s full breast, feeling her heart rapidly beat under his palm, a bird trapped in too small of a gilded cage. </p>
<p>“Please,” Bane uttered on a strangled concerto of sounds as he traced the rough pad of his thumb on slow circles over her stiff, sensitive nipple.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Destroying the Womb to be Reborn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Please,” Bane groaned, openly begging and completely unashamed. </p>
<p>He was a god kneeling in front of the chattel. </p>
<p>“May I say goodbye to my father?” Lilliana whispered as Bane adjusted his rhythm until he filled her with honey-sweet, exquisite slowness. </p>
<p>She pressed her lips together as he shook his head and slid the rough fingertips of one hand up her left arm, his scarred skin a stark imperfection against the smooth skin of her forearm until he could tug the plain ring off her finger.</p>
<p>Lilliana felt tears sting her eyes and competed with the tight coil of pleasure he was creating inside her with his thrusting rigidity. “He knows I’d never take this off if I was alive,” she gasped breathlessly.</p>
<p>“Then when he finds it he will mourn you,” Bane growled musically as he felt his balls pull up close to his body as he couldn’t hold his climax back any longer, his cock spasmed inside her and spit sticky strings of viscous come deep inside her. </p>
<p>Bane dropped his head to the curve of her neck, feeling the strong gallop of her carotid pulse under his ear. </p>
<p>“I will buy you another,” Bane whispered as the hands of the clock moved to the witching hour and his continued stimulation pushed Lilliana into her own orgasmic category five land-locked tsunami, losing her breath as her body quivered when his softening cock slid out of her. </p>
<p>Bane carefully gathered her up in his formidable embrace and kept their bodies touching, no moon beams shone between their naked kissing skin. </p>
<p>Bane felt his heart still and then begin to beat with renewed life, a new reality began to sprout as Lilliana’s expression softened in the moonlit room and she pressed a small hand over his heart. </p>
<p>He was a damaged butterfly that had returned to shred his cocoon as she smoothed her hand up his firm, muscular flesh. Lilliana traced the soft pads of her fingertips over the scattering of old knife lacerations, bullet wounds and poorly performed surgical scars.</p>
<p>His central nervous system quaked with the anticipation of a bullied, hen-pecked chicken revisiting the coop with a throbbing hard-on and a battle-axe as Lilliana traced the tip of her index fingertip over the various coils, wires, and titanium mesh front of his mask. </p>
<p>“Do you ever take this off?” she whispered.</p>
<p>“It’s extremely painful,” Bane murmured and raised a hand to close around her wrist as he began to tug her hand away from his mask.</p>
<p>“Tell me how this happened,” Lilliana was quick to say and lifted her other hand and danced her fingertips over a deep ridge of scar tissue that looked like an open-heart surgical scar if you squinted. </p>
<p>“Tell me about this,” she whispered lowly as she briefly touched a decades old bullet scar on the rounded cap of his shoulder. “This too,” she added in a rush as she pressed her lips to a thickened line of healed skin, the edges puckered and curled inwards from the depth of the wound above his collarbone.  </p>
<p>“I will tell you everything,” Bane stated musically, the words rumbling through his chest as he wrapped up Lilliana’s arms and tucked her against the front of his body and squeezed. Her naked breasts crushed against his chest as his tone reflected his need. “I will tell you everything after we leave this place.”</p>
<p>Bane allowed Lilliana to squirm her arms free and find his eyes in the dim room. Lilliana felt the insides of her thighs sticky wet as she raised a hand and pressed her fingertips to the front of his mask and nodded in the moonlight. </p>
<p>As Bane and Lilliana cleared out of the Villa after poaching the closets, decorative chests and wall safes for clothing, jewelry, money, drugs, and guns, on the way on a newer, sleeker 75 Liberty Learjet, Viktor Kozlov drained another glass of straight vodka with no ice, not helping his already upset gut. </p>
<p>Viktor turned in his seat and looked back at Yuri who assured him with a simple nod that he would soon have his beloved kitten back. </p>
<p>As Viktor refilled his glass and mentally urged the already speeding jet to go faster, back in the land of Bane’s birthplace, suffering and crude surgery in the dark, Bane escorted Lilliana to the same Learjet that had brought her there. The jet had been refueled and flight coordinates filed that showed a generic pair of names that <br/>wouldn’t draw the FAA’s attention. </p>
<p>“Nice plane,” Lilliana called over her shoulder as she settled in the same seat on her flight over. </p>
<p>Bane settled across from her after checking in with the flight crew. </p>
<p>“So where are we headed?” Lilliana asked as the obscenely expensive plane that burned money for gas instead of aviation fuel began to climb into the night air.</p>
<p>Bane made Lilliana wait for an answer as the jet ascended. Bane tugged a metal slate-grey remote detonator from his pocket and looked out the window before he answered. He tapped in a keycode and met Lilliana’s eyes before he pressed the olive-green button in the center of the 9721 device.</p>
<p>Lilliana couldn’t see his smile behind his mask, but she could see the small lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle and brilliant fire danced in his eyes as he gestured at the jet’s side window. </p>
<p>“Don’t miss the show,” he murmured melodically as Lilliana looked out the oval plane window as the liberated unstable reactor turned neutron bomb exploded from the bottom of The Pit from where he had ordered the two anonymous militants to dump it, along with all the bodies from the Villa. </p>
<p>Bane felt the umbilical cord that connected him to the darkness incinerate in the ferocious flames.</p>
<p>Lilliana watched Bane’s masked face as he watched the destruction of The Pit, she could see him molt the invisible cloak of darkness as she returned her attention to the fire.</p>
<p>Lilliana looked back at Bane when she felt his strong hand cover hers and his fingers close around her wrist. </p>
<p>“Are you okay?” she whispered as he wordlessly nodded and tugged her towards him. </p>
<p>Bane kept his grip on her wrist firm as he pulled her onto his lap, her thighs falling to either side of his hips in the roomy seat. </p>
<p>“This was from a man I shared time with in the dark,” Bane murmured musically as he yanked up his slim-fitting shirt and rested her hand on a ragged scar to the right of his belly button. “This was the last time he stole scraps from me,” he added, recalling that even a meal of maggots was something in the belly, barely enough <br/>to survive upon. </p>
<p>Lilliana held her breath as he smoothed his hand up to a thick knot of scar tissue under the skin in the hollow at the base of his throat. Lilliana shivered as she felt his voice vibrate under his skin to tease her fingertips. “This is from fighting for space in the sporadic shafts of sunlight,” Bane murmured and moved her hand down the side of his neck and three disfigured lines in his skin of nearly the same width, depth, and results from the irregular healing. “This was defending my chance for raindrops, unadulterated by the despair I was born into, something pure,” he trailed off into a musical rasp.</p>
<p>Lilliana traced each scar individually and then all three at the same time, her soft touch creating electrical jolts through his body.</p>
<p>Bane dropped his hands to her hips and tugged her closer, allowing himself to reflect one final time on the innocent life he was forced to watch end before he looked up at Lilliana, a light blush crawling over her face as her lips slightly parted, her pink tongue darting out to moisten them.</p>
<p>Bane allowed The Pit to fall away as he stared up at Lilliana, her beautiful face the falling raindrops to soothe him, the sunlight to warm him and guide him from the darkness.  </p>
<p>Lilliana felt a rush of wetness to her intimacy when Bane slipped one hand under her dress to yank the thin satin panties to the side before he fumbled his rapidly hardening cock free. </p>
<p>Bane found his control being tested as he couldn’t fill her fast or hard enough, the angle applied more pressure with each thrust and he knew he wouldn’t last long. </p>
<p>Lilliana squealed involuntarily as Bane raised from the chair and lowered them both to the floor as he kept his cock firmly planted inside her. “Your life is with me now,” he grunted as he erratically pumped in and out of her, their wet flesh kissing with his enthusiasm.  </p>
<p>Bane let himself freefall into the soft sighs and near-breathless panting he was forcing from Lilliana as their long flight to Tahiti began, hours away in the other direction, eventually landing at the same private airstrip in India, Viktor hurried down the stairs that unfolded from the jet with as much speed as his bad joints would allow. </p>
<p>Yuri had arranged an armed transport of ex-military to escort them to Sinclair’s Villa. </p>
<p>The early morning air was stagnant with the aroma of death and toxic fumes that had accompanied the ferocious fires and spectacular display of the unstable reactor being tipped into a state of detonated oblivion. </p>
<p>Viktor’s stomach sank as the armed escort made its way to the Villa. </p>
<p>Yuri knew there would be no life inside the spacious residence but still had his gun drawn along with the militant backup. </p>
<p>Viktor stumbled from room to room, Yuri trying to keep pace with the older man who was driven by a father’s love and adrenaline. </p>
<p>Yuri watched Viktor walk through the double doors of the bedroom suite she had recently occupied, the delicate smell of her imported perfume barely detectable over the potent odor of gun powder, decimated entrails, and blood. </p>
<p>Yuri watched Viktor drop to his knees as he ran his liver-spotted hand over the wrinkled linen and pulled one of Lilliana’s strands of hair free from the tangled bed sheets. </p>
<p>Yuri continued to watch from the doorway as Viktor sank heavily on the mattress and stared down at the mosaic tile floor.</p>
<p>Viktor whipped his head towards Yuri. “Ona stradala?” (“Did she suffer?”)</p>
<p>Yuri shook his head and dropped his eyes at the impossible question. </p>
<p>Viktor insisted on having square inch of the Villa searched while some of the armed men went into the bustling city and questioned the residents, scraping together bits of the truth.</p>
<p>As Yuri and Viktor headed to the center of the city in search of any clue to Lilliana’s fate, almost ten thousand miles away, the Learjet carrying Bane and Lilliana landed at the Tahitian International Airport. </p>
<p>As Bane followed Lilliana’s lithe form down the staircase, nearly stumbling as he grew hypnotized watching the subtle sway of her hips as she descended the metal staircase, hours away in the place of his birth that he had razed into nonexistence, Yuri escorted Viktor through a bustling market where caged animals were thrust into their faces with screaming vendors yelling prices in their foreign tongue.</p>
<p>Viktor stopped short and Yuri almost ran into him as he shouted in a heavily accented voice to a little girl who skipped by with a bright shawl around her hair and thick-soled sandals. “Little one,” Viktor said as he reached out and snagged the edge of the vivid fabric. </p>
<p>The young girl turned towards Viktor with large chocolate brown eyes and greeted the strange man in her foreign tongue. </p>
<p>“Where did you get this little one?” Viktor asked as he squatted down in front of the small child, his knees popping with the movement. </p>
<p>The little girl looked down as Viktor’s large hand closed around her delicate, fine-boned hand and the gold ring around her thumb. </p>
<p>The small child smiled proudly at her golden acquisition and pointed back towards the Villa that Viktor had just stood within, a Villa devoid of bodies, only blood, exposed viscera and bits of brain left behind to dry in the pristine grout lines. </p>
<p>Viktor gently squeezed the little girl’s hand, feeling the cold gold band against his palm. He raised the little girl’s hand and pressed his dry lips against the ring, seeing Lilliana wearing it on her thumb as a child.</p>
<p>“Proshchay moy zolotoy kotenok,” (Farewell my golden kitten,) Viktor called after the gaily dressed little girl as she disappeared into the crowd.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>~The Future</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Gotham City would eventually heal and evolve. The destroyed stadium was rebuilt under the leadership of a new progressive mayor who likened the citizens of Gotham City as her own family. Her campaign slogan was splashed on shirts, mugs, and mouse pads. “Please, Call me Grace.”</p>
<p>On the other side of the world, Bruce raised his daughter in Tokyo and in the decade to come, would have three more children with his wife and always be sure he made his Yakuza father-in-law happy so he could keep all of his fingers. He made regular visits to Wayne Enterprises and to lay flowers at so many graves. </p>
<p>Part of Viktor died when he thought he’d lost Lilliana and he lived the rest of his life in a state of near autopilot.</p>
<p>In the Polynesian island of Tahiti, Bane and Lilliana lived without worry of what the following day would bring. Lilliana never wanted for anything as Bane’s liberated money kept them comfortable on the white sands.</p>
<p>Lilliana became the veritable reincarnation of Gauguin’s Woman with the Flower as Bane was content to watch her for hours walking in the surf, the small waves lapping at her ankles as her bare feet sank into the sand. </p>
<p>Bane never grew tired of looking at her.</p>
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